What Video card would work and a few tec questions

[NitroD]

Hi.

I have a
Motherboard: G41TM-P33 (MS-7592)
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU E3300 @ 2.50GHz
Ram: DDR2 PC2-6400 (400 MHz) (1x2GB Second slot empty Have plans of filling it as of question 2)
PSU 250watts (looking to get a 500w)
and the video is the on-board Intel G41 Express chip-set

So question 1 is, what card can i use?
I'm looking at something between 512 and 1 GB maybe even 2 gb if it will go in without problems, and will it need a personal power supply like i have seen some of the new cards have? Because the 500w i want to get does not have it? and if it does what would be the recommendation? I'm looking for something that does the job of the G41 but you know better something i can play my witcher 2 and gta eflc games that just sit and stare at me 

Q2: MSI's sit says My mobi is limited to 8GB Ram(Cool?) But does that include Vram of the video card?

[Janar]

What OS are you running at the moment? It is likely you have a 32bit OS, which means graphics RAM and system RAM together may be up to 4 GB.

For future, I would recommend upgrading or buying whole new motherboard with new RAM and new CPU for better performance, but this will most likely go beyond your budget.

Answer to Q2: Your motherboard supports 8 GB of RAM, which means you can have max 2 4 GB RAM modules.
I will look into current graphics card offers and see what might work for you.

[NitroD]

Well thanks for a response I currently have 32 bit win 7 pro but i will be up grading to 64 bit,
Story on its own......(don't worry nothing illegal)

I do wish to get a full upgrade but like you said I don't want to change my Motherboard as it encourage more cost of CPU, Heat sinks and the bigger (nicer gtx titan maybe if dreams could come true!) graphics cards.

I was hoping you could tell me the biggest PCIe v1.0 x16 card so i could look for it most sites don't give too much detail so if i know the name of what I'm looking for I could narrow down my search. I really want to play my GTA EFLC even on half settings i,m used to playing low rez where i can hardly read any text and no special effects 

And i take it the (cool) 8gb ram limit is not governed buy the whole computer like the 32bit 4gb limit has to include the caches and video ram??

[brian1996]

Running those games might not work due to your motherboard, the only video cards that will work with your motherboard are ones that use the PCI-e 2.0 interface (pretty much outdated), due to that it's highly likely that you won't have the needed horsepower to run those games. IV (badly ported to pc) and Witcher are quite demanding games.
As with your PSU, it connects to pretty much any GPU.

[ElMartu]

I thought PCI-e 3.0 cards were backwards compatible.

As for your question, you probably won't be able to play those games properly with your CPU, regardless of your graphics card. My condolences.

[brian1996]

I thought PCI-e 3.0 cards were backwards compatible.

Some will work, but chance is high you will suffer from a performance hit due to the 2.0 interface.

[NitroD]

PCI-e 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0 and even 1.0 but it half's the bandwidth. But Witcher 2 works on My PC but its a slide show in the open areas my CPU is ok for most, its a dual core at 2.5ghz, But I still need a video card to help what i have anything will be better than on-board thing... (I don't want to play on max settings.) and will help other games like my BF2 sa-mp etc