The motherboard has little to do with it. The cards themselves don't need that much juice, they are simply stating a wattage that should be safe to run the card on when all other components of a standard gaming system are also present and pulling power. You can use this link to calculate what your PC should actually need.

http://www.journeysystems.com/power_supply_calculator.php

Dell uses various PSUs and you'll have to check your documentation to see which exact one you have and what it's power rating is. Keep in mind that most PSU manufacturers rate their PSUs at Peak wattage, whereas Dell rates their at an average wattage, which will be lower than a peak. So Dell PSUs generally handle more than you think they would.

so you are saying it will be safe to use my stock 160W power supply with a video card that states it 350W - 400 power supply in the System Requirements ??

160W is extremely low. How old is this system. Can you give complete specs for it please?

its a 3 yrs old gateway mid tower with windows xp home SP2 256 mb of ram 40 gig hard drive 2.2 ghz celeron CPU with a 5 port usb pci card and 4 integrated usb ports in the back and 2 usb prts in the front dvd rw/cdrw drive and a dvd rom cdrw drive integrated graphics card

its a good computer it just needs to be up graded to go faster and i do plan on puting 2 gigs of ram in it

That's a tough one to call. First of all, what kind of graphics card do you want to put in it? You have to make certain your rig even has the correct slot for the card you want. A system with those specs may very well not have a slot for an AGP graphics card. Also what are you aims for this PC? A Celeron CPU will limit what you can do with the system even if you do upgrade the VPU.

the gateway suport told me i can drop a p4 in it

but as for the graphics card my computer has has 3 pci slotes in it so i wold like to put a GeForce card in it but it need to have VGA out put on it

and from what i found out i can only put up to 330W power suply in it

dose any one know any thaing about the VisionTek RADEON X1300 512MB DDR2 PCI Express Graphics Card

Message Edited by ricky_bennett on 09-21-2006 06:39 AM

That card is not going to work.
You have PCI slots, not PCI-E slots which that card requires. PCI is one of the oldest ways still available to put a graphics card in. At that age the PC definitely won't have a PCI-E slot. Doesn't sound like it has an AGP slot either, which was the best way to go until recently when PCI-E came out.

These are some of the best cards I can find for you on a quick search.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102533
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814145055

Neither of them is all that great of a card anymore though.

As for the PSU that might be the highest you can go with what gateway will provide buy you can get other PSUs pretty much as high as there is available and it'll work so long as you can:
1) Mount it correctly
2) It has the correct connectors for your mobo
3) Gateway's mobo doesn't use proprietary wiring configurations for the power connectors. If they do you are limited to a gateway PSU.

the computer is only 3 yrs old

dont konw if i have agp or not but if that is wate the brown sockit is on mother board with a green chip thaing in it then i guss it dose have it

hare is a pic of it http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k253/Ricky-Bennett/computer/Picture001.jpg

hare are other pics of the mother board if it helps and yes i know i need to clean it

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k253/Ricky-Bennett/computer/Picture005.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k253/Ricky-Bennett/computer/Picture004.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k253/Ricky-Bennett/computer/Picture003.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k253/Ricky-Bennett/computer/Picture002.jpg

yep if you pop the black plastic cap off of the brown slot then that should be your AGP slot. You'll need to look for an AGP interfaced graphics card. I haven't really been keeping up with them lately so I don't know what the best ones are considered to be right now. You really might want to think about adding up your costs for upgrading the other components first. I've seen some sales on eMachines lately that give you a very good system, new with much better components at a lower cost than you could upgrade all you need in this one. Pop a good PCI-E video card in the eMachine and you have a good gaming rig. eMachine is owned by Gateway as well.

But back on this one, if you want a new graphics card. then it has to be AGP and will be limited by the kind of PSU you can put in it.

well that was esey i just found info on my mother board

Specifications


Specifications
Form Factor Micro-ATX
Processor Support for Intel® Pentium® 4 and Celeron™ processors
400/533-MHz System Data bus 478-pin ZIF socket
Memory Support for 64-Mb, 128-Mb, 256-Mb or 512-Mb technologies
Two DIMM socket support for two DDR266/333 DIMMs
Maximum system memory

256 MB (using 64-Mb technology)
512 MB (using 128-Mb technology)
1,024 MB (using 256-Mb technology)
2,048 MB (using 512-Mb technology)

Single-sided or dual-sided un-buffered DDR-DRAM DIMM configuration

Chipset 82845GE GMCH
82801 DB ICH4
82802AB 4Mbit FWH

Integrated Ethernet Intel 82562ET (Kinnereth) 10/100-Mbps Platform LAN Connect (PLC) device
Audio Chipset Audio subsystem for AC ‘97 processing using the Analog Devices AD1981B codec (analog only output jack)
I/O Controller SMC LPC47M172-NR I/O controller
LBA Support for 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA)
Intgrated Video Intel Extreme Graphics controller
AGP connector supporting 1X, 2X, and 4X AGP cards (1.5 V only) or an AGP Digital Display (ADD) card
Integrated retention mechanism

Peripheral Interfaces Six USB 2.0 ports
One serial port
One parallel port
Two IDE interfaces with Ultra DMA, ATA-33/66/100 support
One disk drive interface
PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports

Expansion Capabilities Intel/AMI BIOS (resident in the 4 Mbit FWH)
Support for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), Plug and Play, and SMBIOS

Reliability MTBF data is calculated from predicted data at 55° C (131° F)
MTBF is 112,977.7547 hours
Certifications CSA C22.2 No. 60950/UL 60950, 3rd Edition, 2000:
Bi-National Standard for Safety of Information Technology Equipment including Electrical Business Equipment (USA and Canada)

FCC (Class B):
Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 2 and 15, Subpart B, Radio Frequency devices (USA)