What, if any, is the difference between nVidia and ATI video cards?

Different companies.
Both make video cards for gaming. Cards or chipsets from other manufacturers (like Sis or Intel) aren't usually tested by game developers).

Not every card Nvidia or ATI makes is suitable for gaming though.

Is one superior in quality to the other?

Both ATI and nVidia make very good gaming cards. Which is best changes from year to year (if not month to month). You can't go wrong with either one so long as you don't purchase one not intended for gaming.

I was thinking of a Dell Inspiron 580. It has an ATI Radeon HD 5450 DDR 3 1GB.

The HD 5450 is a fairly low end graphics card. But, depending on what type of games you play it may be adequate. It performs in the range of a GF 7600GS.

3D types will most likely be out of the question if you enable all the bells and whistles.

My current computer has a nVidia 8500 GT. Would I need to upgrade the card to play 3D games or will it be adequate? If I need an upgrade, what would be recommended?

An 8500 GT is nearly identical to a 7600 GS. Although some 3D types may play, most will feel sluggish.


What type of card you can upgrade to depends on other components in your PC. How many watts does your power supply have and what type of slot does motherboard use for video (PCI x16)?

If you are considering buying that one, from what I can tell with a Google search, the Inspiron 580 only has a 300 Watt power supply. That would limit how much you could upgrade the video card unless you wanted to upgrade both video card and power supply.
***This review*** criticizes the low wattage of the power supply.

I have a 450 watt power supply. The video slot is a PCI. Where do I find out about the x16 or whatever it may be? (PCI, VEN_10DE & DEV_ 0421)

If this is your system - It's a PCI x16 slot.

InspironTM 580 desktop

Assuming you have that 450 watt PSU - you can select from any number of pretty good video cards.

A Geforce GTS 250 would fit just fine - you could also run a Geforce GTX 460 (but it would cost about twice the price).


Edit -

I may have misunderstood your last post. Did you mean you have a 450 watt PSU in your current system? If so, you'd need to know your motherboard model number to figure out what type of expansion slot you have.

Is there any way to tell what power supply I have without opening up the pc. Thanks
Richard

If you know the brand and model number, you might look up the default system specs on their website.

I was talking about my current system. Where do I find the motherboard model number?
Would a Marvell 88SE61xx be the motherboard model number?

I think that's your onboard network card/chipset.

To identify your motherboard, you can use CPU-Z
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Click the Mainboard tab and tell us what it says there.

Thanks for the link. What we have is an
Intel D975XBX2. PCI - Express. 450 watt power supply.

That be this one -

Intel Desktop Board D975XBX2

And it's a PCI-E x16, so you've got a fairly wide selection of cards to choose from.

I have a 2.13 GHz Core Duo processor. It apears that it would be cheaper to get a new video card rather than a whole new computer. What would be my best choice for a video card?

I'm sure you get a lot of different answers, but the GTS 250 would be a good choice for the money.

Newegg GPU : GeForce GTS 200 Series

You can compare the specs to those of the HD 5450 below:

HD 5450 versus Geforce GTS 250

The GTS 250 is the clear winner.

So can I just pull one card out and pop the other in or do you have to know what you're doing?

There's probably a retention clip holding the card in the slot don't break it - other than that anyone can replace a video card.

Edit -

Make sure you discharge yourself before you touch the internals - touch the chassis if it's metal first).

OK, we have one XFX GS250XYDFU GeForce GTS 250 video card coming from Newegg. I looks like I have to remove two teeny screws and pop that puppy in. If I mess it up, I can always take it to the handy dandy computer repair man.

You should be fine, ecakacs. The card will come with a driver disk and - hopefully - some good instructions.

After I installed the drivers from the disk for the last new card I installed, I found there were newer drivers on the Nvidia website, so I went there and updated the drivers.

You will love your new video card!

Good choice - XFX is an excellent OEM

The card doesn't have a VGA port, so if you current monitor doesn't have a DVI port you'll have to us the included DVI to VGA adapter. It also occupies 2 port covers on the case (the 2nd is for an air intake for the fan).

As Drac stated you're going to love it, it's a huge improvement over your existing card.

I'll let you know how things turn out. thanks for the input.
Is there any way to get around this anti-static strap that's in the instructions for changing the card?