Help needed to select viable graphics card for my limited system

[fluidhammer]

Hi, I am not very PC savvy and I need to find a cheap second hand graphics card to work on my Dell Dimension E520 PC and windows 10 or i have a Dell Dimension 9150. I am unemployed at the moment so am very limited money wise.
I only play call of duty united offensive multiplayer and wondered if anyone could help with any suggestions.
I would really appreciate a list of cards that I could look out for on ebay at the right price.
I have looked at psu and its only 305w I have another PC, dell dimension 9150 that is on windows 7 that has a 375w psu I could swap, so guess 375w is my psu capability but 9150 needs a sound card.
Would the Dimension 9150 on windows 7 be the best one to use?
If this is not enough power I could maybe stretch to replacing the psu with a second hand one so there might be options you might think that would be best with an upgraded psu, please tell me what psu I need if this is the case.
I have spent hours researching this and have come here as a last option. I don't really understand the psu connectivity requirements either as I don't know what the different connectors are, so if you wouldn't mind letting me know what psu will fit my system if I need to upgrade I would really appreciate that too.

 

[TheELF]

Stay with the E520 and don't change the PSUs the 9150 is ancient and if it is still the original PSU it is way too old.

Do you use the original 17" display?
At what resolution are you gaming.
How much money are you willing to spend?

Basically run speccy wait for it to find everything and the select everything (ctrl+a inside the text-field) and copy/paste the info.

Did you try to run the game or do you have no card at all right now?
The mobo seems to have onboard graphics tell us how it runs on this.

 

[Ken g6]

The good news is call of duty united offensive appears to use the Quake 3 engine. So it doesn't take an expensive video card to run it very well.

For a new card I'd look at a 750ti. This nice EVGA is the one I'm using right now, and it's $100AR.

The next step down I'd look at would be a used 7750.

 

[frozentundra123456]

What is your cpu? Pretty much anything should run that game. If you can afford it, the 750Ti is the best card that will run on your psu, and would give you the ability to run almost any game at decent settings. For that particular game, an nvidia GT740/750 or an AMD 240/250 would be fine.

 

[fluidhammer]

Hi, thank you all for taking the time to help me out. I have been playing this game since it came out around 2004. I am very good at this version and can notice small difference in my game play due to small ping differences on different servers.
I have been using the dell 9150 with a Radeon x600 graphics card since 2006 but it seems to be struggling these days with big lag issues and my game play has really suffered. This set up ran the game at 1280 x 1024 although the best resolution should be 2048 x 1563. I have a 23” HD wide screen monitor and would like to play the game at its highest settings.
Due to being conned by a supposed friend, my business is now bankrupt and I have no money coming in at all and am fighting to keep my house so I need to spend as little as possible but this game is now the only thing that is giving me any relief from a massive amount of stress.

I looked at the suggestions made by Ken and appreciate your suggestion but the cheapest I could find was £60 which is double what I paid for this E520 and maybe a bit too much graphics card for what I need but then again I don't really know. I just need a second hand one that will run COD UO comfortably at full settings and be compatible with the E520 and windows 10.

Thank you Frozen for your suggestions. My psu is 305w. The last suggestions you mentioned are a little cheaper but I don't know if I have a six pin connector for the power supply and Nvidia recomend 400w for the GT740/750. Is there such a thing as an adapter that wont cost much?

The E520 seems to be in good clean condition and I have just tried to run COD UO on it and it will only display the game at 1024 x 768 in a letterbox on the screen and is very laggy (unplayable) and the audio didn't sound too good either.

Thank you TheElf for offering to help me further. I ran speccy and the results are below.

psu is model no - L305p - 01 +12va/18a max +12vb/18a max


Operating System
Windows 10 Pro 32-bit
CPU
Intel Pentium D 915
Presler 65nm Technology
RAM
2.00GB DDR2
Motherboard
Dell Inc. 0WG864 (Microprocessor)
Graphics
DELL S1909WN (1366x768@60Hz)
Intel G965 Express Chipset Family (Dell)
Intel G965 Express Chipset Family (Dell)
Storage
298GB Hitachi HDS721032CLA362 (SATA)30 °C
149GB Hitachi HDS721616PLA380 (SATA)37 °C
Optical Drives
TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-H653A
Audio
High Definition Audio Device

I could upgrade the ram if I need to.



As for funding, I need to spend what I need to but as little as it would take to acheive running the game at full settings without struggling. Hopefully this wont be much as it is an old game and I have no intention of playing anything else.
I am very grateful that you are spending your time to help.

 

[Denithor]

Okay, you're running an ancient P4 machine. Yikes. Any modern GPU is going to be massively bottlenecked by your CPU.

I'm going to guess you're from the UK somewhere? Based on the "£60" in your post above. So you aren't going to be buying from a US shop, and prices are likely going to run higher for you.

I don't know quite the best thing to tell you. If you were in US, you'd have access to refurbished Dell machines (i3 systems sell for like US$100, i5 for around US$150). The integrated graphics on these would be far better than what you're using currently. As it is, I'd suggest something like an 8800GT or an HD 7770 perhaps?

Oh, and they definitely do make PSU adapters, this is what you're looking for:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Express-Pow...457376302&sr=8-2&keywords=6-pin+molex+to+pcie

 

[Flapdrol1337]

As for funding, I need to spend what I need to but as little as it would take to acheive running the game at full settings without struggling. Hopefully this wont be much as it is an old game and I have no intention of playing anything else.

Call of duty united offensive is ancient. It recommends a dx9 gpu with 64 MB and hardware t&l.

You can get cards at this level for free or next to nothing used.

 

[fluidhammer]

Thanks for taking the time to reply guys. Due to the advice given I have decided to wait a while and get a better pc. Thanks for your input, it was very helpful.