Dell Dimension 3000 Graphics Card

You are using the onboard intergrated graphics currenly. This is a chip mounted on the motherboard so is not really a graphics card.

You are only limited to PCI graphics cards that you could use in your system. What you have to do at this moment is to determine if you have an open PCI slot available. IF you do not than your are stuck unsing the onboard graphics unless you can free up a PCI slot.

This LINK will give you an idea of some the available PCI cards that you could purchase.

Thank you very much for this. i have got one pci slot available although it appears to be limited for space by the modem i think it is above? as i use wireless do i need to keep this modem? would this pci card be suitable to enable vista aero aswell?  http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?ZOT-52256P#  and am i correct in saying that i would not need to disable the chipset as it isnt a graphics card?

Thanks again

If you do not use dial up or need fax capabilites then the modem is unnecassary in your system.

It does appear that the card you link to will support Visa looking at the Driver Listing on the NVIDIA site.

So if the rest of your computer hard ware will support vista then this card will be able to run Aero

Yes adding in a dedicated video card will require you to disable the on board graphics controller. This would be done by going into the bios.

thanks for all your help, one last thing could you possibly give me instructions on what order i need to do when installing the card. e.g first disable the graphics controller then install card, reboot - install driver. and is it easy to get into the bios and disable the controller? will these sort of instructions be in the manual?

Booting into the bios instruction should be in the manul but here is how.

When you boot you see the big DELL screen. as soon as you see this screen tap the F2 key untill you see in the upper right corner of the screen Entering system setup or something very simular.

When in the bios you use the keybord to navigate. HERE is the section of your manual for info on the bios. you will want to navigate to the video section as show in the link.

The basic procedure would be to power down your system. open the case and remove your modem and install your new video card.

power on the system and boot directly into the bios. disable the onbord and select I assume to use the video card. not sure what your exact options are for the video setting.

once you do that exit and save changes an let the system boot inot window. insert the disk that comes with the card and install the drivers. Ther should also be instructions with the card.

I hope you are still monitoring this thread cos I just want to make sure that a DDR2 video card is compatible with this system. Thanks.

DDR2 pertains to the memory on the video card, which should work just fine in your system.  The thing you need to watch for is that the interface is standard PCI.  If you get a card that says "AGP" or "PCI-E x16", or anything that says something other than PCI, you need to take it back.  The Dimension 3000 only accepts the standard PCI add-on cards.