Graphics card for older PC

[Taxon]

Hey all

A friend of mine has an old PC:

P4 3.6Ghz (560 I think)
1GB RAM
Crappy 200W Power Supply (would need replacing with a decent 350-400W?)

He's looking to get a dedicated graphics card for some gaming. Would the old Pentium be able to avoid a bottleneck with any modern PCI Express cards? Perhaps a lower end 3xxx series ATi? I'm not really sure of the capabilities of the processor, but we have people at our LAN's on far worse machines He would also be willing to throw in another 1GB of RAM if it would help.

Thanks

 

[Andrew1990]

nothing greater than a 9600GSO or 4670 in my opinion. There is a 9600GSO in Hot Deals for $55 I think.

 

[yh125d]

EA380/430 - $50
2GB DDR2 - $25
4670/9600 something - $60

Any possibility of stepping up to a modern CPU or will he have some ancient 775 with no chance of supporting a C2D?

 

[Taxon]

It's pre-C2d (only just) :S

What kind of power would the system + 9600/4670 need?

Thanks

 

[0roo0roo]

p4 mhz sounds impressive, but in reality its dog dog slow compared to modern processors.
it will hold back many video cards i bet.

 

[dguy6789]

I would take the 4670 over the 9600 just because it uses less power and doesn't need a power plug plugged into the card. I would wager you could even use it in the pc you listed without having to buy a new power supply.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

If you're going to upgrade the PSU, you might as well get an HD 4830 for a few bucks more than the 4670 series. Yes it will be bottlenecked by the P4, but when he does decide to upgrade the CPU it will transfer over nicely.

My HD 4830 runs and overclocks well on my EA430.