Advice on new Video Card

[ferris209]

Well, being the Star Wars fan I am, I naturally took a ponder over to the computer games isle one day and found Empire at War. This game is great and runs well on my system, except I have to run the graphics level almost at minimum, because otehrwise the game lags. I can only guess it is because of the fact that I settled for the Sapphire Radeon 9250. So now I've come to the conclusion that it's time to upgrade my video card. Here are my computer details:

Motherboard: Asus A8V Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 512K, L2 Cache, Socket 939 Windows Compatible 64-bit
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon 9250 128 Ram, DDR
Memory: Corsair Value Select 184 Pin 512MBx4 DDR PC-3200 2048 MB total Ram
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro PCI Sound Card
PSU: Thermaltake Silent PurePower, 420W ATX power supply
HDD: Seagate 200GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model ST3200822AS
Monitor: ViewSonic VP171B-2 17" LCD Monitor, 8ms
OS:Microsoft Windows XP Professional With Service Pack 2
Case:COOLER MASTER Praetorian Black ALUMINUM MID-TOWER CASE, Model "PAC-T01-EK"

I'm leaning toward buying a 6800XT card by XFX, but I don't know. Outside of the original GTA, SIMS, and Das Boot (anyone rememeber that), I'm a big noob to this computer gaming stuff. I just want to run my Empire at War at full graphics potential without any lag or problems. I really hope not to spend anymore than$150, so let's keep it around there. If I have to I will go higher, but only if I absolutely have to. Also, if I do run a 6800XT, I wonder if I'll have to upgrade my PSU. I'm not having any problems right now and I run all the above listed stuff, plus a card reader, an ipod, an Olympus digital recorder, and an external hard drive. So I am really nervous about overtaxing my PSU. So what do you guys recommend I do?

[Apocalypse|TFL]

Your PSU is fine in my opinion, I don't know much about the quality of XFX but a 6800XT will do you (and the game) proud.

[ferris209]

I got the card in yesterday and MAN was it the best money I spent, I can run EAW with everything set to full with no prob. I also boosted my 3dmark03 rating ten fold from 1024 to 11113. But, of course, everything has it negatives. As predicted, I think my PSU is struggling. Since I've put the new card in, my system seems to run a lot slower, it takes several seconds for my second hard drive to spin up for access when it used to take about one second. It's also taking forever to start windows, I ran Winpatrol and cleaned up some of the startup programs, didn't help. I noticed that when Windows used to start, everything would happen at once, i.e. optical drives spinning, hard dish drives spinning, floppy drive and car reader functioning. Now everything happens one at a time, so result is longer start-ups. My card reader also quit functioning at one point for no reason. All in all I think I need to upgrade my PSU, so the hunt begins (suggestions please). I'm also now having some standby issues, now when I try to go into standby my OS shuts down and the light on the front of my rig starts blinking, but I can hear every fan in case roaring, including the PSU. I know that this is related to the graphics hardware upgrade, so if anyone can help, it would be great.