Can anyone reccomend a video card?

Hey guys, I absolutely love RTS games and its the only kind of game that i play on pc, anyway, i got my pc 3 years ago back when it was top of the line from Dell. I went and bought supreme commander the other day and it runs so bad. i am not a pc expert, i dont understand most of the terminology but i need to play supreme commander, and i dont want to buy a new pc

i have a p4 ht 3.2ghz processor (is this too old)

i have 3 gb of ram (it came with 1 gb, but i bought 2 more gigs from ebay)

i have a radion x300 128mb graphics card

What Dell model do you have?

Supreme Commander is one of the more CPU-intensive games, so that Pentium 4 may be strained quite a bit. I suppose getting a new video card would help though. :) 

You could, but I doubt your motherboard can support anything worthwhile to upgrade to. Mind telling me the model of the Dell you have?

I say get a new video card for now (the X300 is terrible, really) and if Supreme Commander is truly unplayable, then return the card and consider getting a new PC. A cheap gaming PC can cost from $500-700, but spending more will obviously get you a better PC. :) 

its a dell dimension 8400 

 i know so little about pc's,  i have a 3.2 ghz processor with 3 gigs of ram with that old videocard,  i want to upgrade my videocard to something nicer at the 256 mb level and i was thinking about the x800,  i need to get a pci e-16 type card i guess.

can you give me any specific examples of a card that would be perfect for a system like mine?

also, just a question, what if that new 8800 directX10 card (the one thats all over these forums)  was put into my computer,  would it work at all or what would happen?

anyway, i need a card thats going to put the computer that i currently have at its visual pinnacle, most of my gameplaying is on the 360 but in situations like this, i must play supreme commander 

Interesting, you have a 350W power supply in your Dimension 8400. :)

It's easily high-quality enough for an X1950XT..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102067

But I would suggest getting the X1950Pro.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102061

Using an 8800 with the 350W power supply in your Dell may be a little pushing it, so I wouldn't try. 

No big deal. Just buy a VGA to DVI adapter. Chances are your new video card probably even comes with one.

If you really want to enjoy Supreme Commander in all its glory you will need a quadcore. By experience i can tell you that even an overclocked X6800(high en dual core) has trouble with this game on huge maps and lots of units on screen and it lags when the armies meet in one spot. A q6600(quad core) runs it so much better and is smooth as butter. If you are looking for a good gaming computer for the next years i would suggest waiting for the july price cuts. The q6600 will only be priced at $266.