[rcoasby]

Hello

I just bought this Emachines T6420 for my son. What would be an appropriate graphics card upgrade for him...bearing in mind that the machine was under $400 and is not exactly a screamer. He wants to play Doom and so on.

Thanks in advance for any help

Kind regards

Richard

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The onboard video is a Nvidia 6100 series GPU. The only upgrades you can do with that is a nvidia 6600, 6800, or 7800 PCI-E card. The benefit of adding a graphics card is they have their own memory on the card so you don't have to use the system memory. The bad part of this is that even a 6600 video card costs near $100 and can go up to $300 for the 7800 card. Another thing to think about is that emachines usually install a power supply that is just enough to run the computer. Installing a better video card may cause you to also buy a more powerful power supply to be able to run the card. The 6600 and 6800 graphics cards can use up to 60 watts by themselves and the 7800 will use 75 watts. If the PS is marginal to start with a new card will start crashing the computer. A good power supply will cost another $100 or so.

So i would just try running the games and see if it will work. If not return the computer and buy one more suitable for gaming.

http://www.5starsupp...uild_gaming.htm

http://www.5starsupp...ld_computer.htm

SRX660

[SRX660]

The onboard video is a Nvidia 6100 series GPU. The only upgrades you can do with that is a nvidia 6600, 6800, or 7800 PCI-E card. The benefit of adding a graphics card is they have their own memory on the card so you don't have to use the system memory. The bad part of this is that even a 6600 video card costs near $100 and can go up to $300 for the 7800 card. Another thing to think about is that emachines usually install a power supply that is just enough to run the computer. Installing a better video card may cause you to also buy a more powerful power supply to be able to run the card. The 6600 and 6800 graphics cards can use up to 60 watts by themselves and the 7800 will use 75 watts. If the PS is marginal to start with a new card will start crashing the computer. A good power supply will cost another $100 or so.

So i would just try running the games and see if it will work. If not return the computer and buy one more suitable for gaming.

http://www.5starsupp...uild_gaming.htm

http://www.5starsupp...ld_computer.htm

SRX660

[Neil Jones]

Srx660's reply assumes that the Emachines in question has the ability to add a separate graphics card. 99% of eMachines that I have seen do not have this ability hence why the systems are dirt cheap. The power supply is another issue as well, as I've also seen quite a few, again in eMachines and other manufacturers, that aren't standard size and are horribly underpowered.

[SRX660]

The Emachines website states this computer has a PCI-E slot, but is running on-board 6100 graphics.

SRX660

[rcoasby]

Thanks to all for the replies
Richard