Computer has 250 watt PSU. Want to play COD2 but needs video card

A friend has a Dell dimension B110, celeron 2.53 ghz, 512 ram system (presently using onboard video). He wanted to get a decent video card (to play COD2) but was told he'd need atleast 400 watt power supply. Because it's a dell he can't just buy one (it won't fit in the case). He contacted dell, and support told him the motherboard couldn't handle a higher wattage PSU !!!!???? I've never hard of anything like that.
My son in law said my friend would be ok getting something like a geforce 6800 or 7600, 7800 video card, cuz he's only got a 300 watt PSU and he's using a geforce 7800gs card with no problems. So, could my friend get away with just 250 watt with one of those card???

 

If he only has 1 hard drive, one cd rom, and an a drive he should be ok with 250, I used to have a 250 watt with 2 cd rom and 2 hard drives and an A drive, along with an ATI 64 meg card and all was well
Jaza

 

I run COD2 on an ATI Radeon 9500. Runs like a dream. No power worries.

 

Dell support lying in a spectacularly bad way. The Wattage on a PSU only effects the maximum power that can be drawn, if your PC only wants 150 Watts, it only takes 150.

A 250 Watt PSU is will struggle with a powerful graphics card, however, you don't want a particularly powerful graphics card because the PC isn't powerful enough anyway (your 512 of RAM will limit performance in many games anyway).

I would go with a tried and tested good graphics card from a while back. The 6600 GT and 6800 GT were both great nvidia cards, the x800 xl from ATI is what I'm still using and I'm very happy with it. Check out the graphics card comparison charts here at the level of those cards and try to make sure that the PC exceeds the minimum specs.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html

There is a possibility that the PSU isn't up to it. I'd buy the graphics card from a decent supplier so you can RMA (or upgrade the PSU) if the PC doesn't start after you plug it in.