435MT with Dell Radeon HD 7770 OK?

The Vision Tek card is not a Dell card.  It is only sold by Dell just like any other retailer would sell a video card.  I would first make sure you are not paying too much for it because Vision Tek always seem to be overpriced compared to others.  HERE are some that may be more reasonable in cost.  The HD 7770 will be fine on your power supply. 

Edit:  I looked it up.  I see Dell selling the VisonTek for $150 which is way too much.  Sapphire is AMD's #1 brand.  

Your recommendation is helpful and thank you.  I only focused on the VisionTek because it was unclocked, 3yr warranty (from Dell, otherwise lifetime) and hopefully Dell approved.  

Dell-Chris M, hopefully you can tell me if the HD 7770 is approved for the 435MT?  Thank you.

HERE is the exact same card sold by Newegg and it comes with a lifetime warranty.  It cannot be Dell approved because it was never tested on this system.  The HD 7770 was never on the market when the Studio XPS 435mt was released.  I'm not sure what you mean by unclocked.  

Thanks, your specific suggestion is very helpful.  

Dell Chris- M on 21 May 2011 said the HD 5770 was a 'good choice', so the term 'Dell approved' may be a bit strong. I meant to say 'not overclocked'.

Thanks again.

Chris meant that the HD 5770 was a good choice for the power supply.  Buying a VisionTek card from Dell does not guarantee anything or that it will work.  The HD 7770 from anyone states a requirement of a 400 watt power supply.  The HD 5770 actually had a 450 watt requirement.  The first thing any support service will ask is what size power supply you have if you are having any problems getting the card to work.  If you don't meet the requirement, they probably won't offer much more support even though it simply does not require it.  The power supply in your system is 360 watts.  However, we know that the HD 7770 uses less power than the HD 5770 which others have used.  

Any factory overclocked card is usually minimal and will hardly use anymore power.  The standard clock speeds of the HD 7770 are 1000 mhz on the core clock and 1125 mhz on the memory clock.  With the ones I linked, only two are overclocked by a small amount.  

Thanks.  Those are good comments and make sense.  

If Dell- Chris M blessed the HD 7770, it seems Dell support service has said they would be willing to support it.

Isn't your model past its warranty? In that case, you're on your own unless you want to pay for support.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

Yes, the unit is past its warranty. I did pay for Dell support service and they recommended I replace the graphics card.  If I bought the Dell-supplied VisionTek HD 7770, Dell provides a three year warranty. Yes, I was hoping Dell- Chris M or someone from Dell on this Forum would bless the HD 7770 so Dell support services would support it.  Otherwise, you could buy this card or a similar card as suggested earlier on this Forum elsewhere for less.

Yes, I did look at the HD 7750 vs the HD 7770:

For performance, it is ranked one step higher on Tom's Hardware www.tomshardware.com and received a PassMark score of 1592 www.videocardbenchmark.net versus the factory HD 4850 with a PassMark score of 1030.  However, the HD 7770 ranked two steps higher on Tom's Hardware than the factory HD 4850 and had a PassMark score of 2113, much better.

For power requirements, the HD 7750 according to http://.forums.atomic.com requires 6-23-43-49 (idle-peak 2D-typical 3D-peak 3D) versus the factory HD 4850 at 54-60-145-217.  However, the HD 7770 requires 11-29-67-84, still almost half the power of the factory HD 4850.

For power connections, the HD 4850 requires one 6pin connector, while the HD 7750 apparently requires none.  The HD 7770 requires one 6pin connector. Dell Chris-M said on 18 April 2009 that the 435MT can run any video card that requires one (or no) 6pin connector.

Yes, the HD 7750 is a good suggestion, but it seems the HD 7770 has better performance and still uses almost half the power of the factory HD 4850.  

I would appreciate Dell-Chris M or someone from Dell to bless the HD 7750 or HD 7770  to receive support services.  Unfortunately, unlike the 435T, the Dell site under "Parts & Upgrades" does not recognize the 435MT so we don't know what Dell recommends.

There will be no blessings for NON DELL Hardware NOT VALIDATED.  The system is old enough to be EOL as far as Validation and Testing.  Even with the DELL 5770 there were supplies of equal (wattage) but not applicable to be used with the same power supply from the same vendor.

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