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A buddy of mine is wanting to upgrade his video card for his 3 year old Dell. Since he's in another state, it's hard for me to provide a good upgrade option since I have no idea what the power supply can handle, case dimensions, etc. I do know that he's currently using a Radeon HD 4350, but other than that, I'm clueless. His budget is up to $300, but I doubt a card of that price will be necessary. The computer is primarily be used for web surfing, word processing, videos, etc. I'm pretty sure that if he could, he would play a few games here and there, but it is not a necessity. Any help would be appreciated.

Well, the fastest card you can get without an external power connector is a Radeon 7750. That's the fastest that you can reasonably expect trouble-free operation from without knowing much about his power supply. Plus it's pretty darn fast.

If he's not playing games, pretty much anything is going to be sufficient. The 4300/4500 series might struggle with HD web videos, but the 6400 series won't. On the nVidia side, anything from a GeForce GT 430 on up should be sufficient too. I'd only look at the 7750 if I was going to be playing games.

The Studio XPS 435MT has a 360-watt power supply (model N248K). It may be rated at 16 Amperes (192 watts) on the +12 V rail, which is weak. This is a standard ATX power supply, in case your buddy wants to upgrade to something beefier like this Corsair CX500 or this SeaSonic S12II 430.

The original PSU might be able to power a Radeon HD7850, which would provide excellent gaming performance. If your buddy isn't going to play the latest 3D games, then the Radeon HD7750 that derFunkenstein recommended is the best choice.

Yeah, he went with the 7750. Thanks for the help.

Did you buddy upgraded his power supply too ?