Help! GPU died — could use advice on a replacement

[Lovestar]

Hi guys. In a nutshell — my GPU just spontaneously died. And by "died", I mean "the entire screen shattered and turned into psychotic points of light, and everything in Stormwind turned neon red and untextured". I know it's the GPU, because everything is working fine now that I've swapped in an oldschool PCI card I had lying around in a drawer.

But, this card is old and sucks (12 FPS on minimum settings). I definitely need a replacement, but I'm extremely busy with work/school right now and also somewhat out-of-the-loop in terms of PC tech. So, I'm hoping some of the knowledgeable folks around here can help me sort things out and get a replacement ordered.

First of all, I have a really old system. These are the specs:

• This is the card that died.
• This is my motherboard.
• This is my power supply.
• I'm running Windows XP, and I have max'd out this lame motherboard at 2GB RAM.
• Motherboard is compact form-factor and crowded. I have no vertical space above the PCI-E slot (heatsink is right next to it), and very little horizontal space (will hit the RAM). I have infinite vertical space below the PCI-E slot, though.

I'm on a shoestring budget (school, ... medical); $US 100-150 would be the absolute max I can afford right now.

Thanks in advance. :>

[glo]

First and foremost, you can use any PCI card in any PCI slot. They're all backwards compatible.

You don't have much headroom with that power supply, so here's about the best you can do and save some money at the same time.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161395

If you want to spend a little more you can pick up a 6770 from the same brand. Would cost around 120~. It's very compact and doesn't require any wiring to the PSU. It's basically an entry level gaming GPU, but still it will be leaps and bounds better than what you were using previously.

[Lovestar]

First and foremost, you can use any PCI card in any PCI slot. They're all backwards compatible.

Thank you so much for this simple rule. It's the sort of thing I was suspecting from Wiki/Google, but wanted to be sure before I ordered anything.

Thanks for the recommendation. Since I posted, I've dug up this one — http://www.evga.com/products/moreinf...01G-P3-1441-KR — which is about the same price, but it's nVidia (which I prefer right now, only because I've already got those drivers installed/working fine on my current house-of-cards setup). And EVGA, which I've had good history with.

It seems like it's about the same price and the same specs — seem like an OK buy?

[glo]

That's a multimedia card. Unfortunately you'll get roughly half of the performance out of it compared to the card I linked.

If you absolutely want EVGA / Nvidia, the cheapest entry level gaming card would be:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130625