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I am looking to get a new video card for gaming. I have a dell dimension 5100 which has a pci express 16x slot but from the pictures of cards i have looked at (geforce 7 series mostly) it does not look like they will fit due to the position of the slot and the thickness of the cards. Also i have no idea how to check about powering it etc. its all very new and confusing to me can anyone help?

Hi ed123,

Welcome to PCHF.

It all depends on what type of games you hope to play and how much you can afford? but if your worried about power, you can calculate your power requirements here: eXtreme Power Supply Calculator - What Power Supply Do I Need

I'm pritty sure the 5100's are 350w, but you can double check on the Power supply itself. The Geforce 7 card's are nice, I would highly recommend NVidia.

thanks very much thats helpful. however im still worried about the the larger and the double cards physically fitting inside my pc. the pci slot is at the very top of all the slots on the motherboard and most video cards are several cm's high with the pci at the bottom, same with the extra metal bit above the outputs, theres no hole at the back of the pc for it. its hard to explain, i dont know if you'll be able to understand from what ive said? :-s have you ever seen something like this before?

ek, I think I know what you mean. There are a few different versions of the 5100 series. Do you have the thinner model, does it look like this at the back?

no, mine looks like this. as you can see all the video bits are at the top with no spare room above

(couldnt make it bigger sorry, its not the slim version anyway)

yer i can.....

Ahh, that's ok. It does mean your limited to the single slot cards, and not ones that use dual slots. Some of these cards are not anything special. They may look better, but the extra slot is generally used for additional cooling. There are some like the GX2's that are essentially two cards strapped together, and share the processing power. One card renders the top half of the screen whilst the other renders the bottom half. I have a similar setup here, two 6600's using SLI, but a single 7900 would see my two card's and laugh at them for being sooo silly! I personally don't have any problems with my 6600's, they play all the games I need without any lag, but a single one would definately struggle.

If you did want one of these cards, you would need to change your case as well.