1. 1. 1. and a little more.

I've done quite a bit of research on this. I'm not a gamer but do some video editing and, of course, work with digital photos from the cameras.

I considered the 600GT card but they were hard to find, at least at a price anywhere near what I wanted to spend on my old 4550. I concluded that, for a very reasonable price (about $40 CDN plus shipping etc)the 6200 card was the right fit for me. The evga 6200 card gets lots of great reviews (heat sink, not fan, so very quiet) but clearly is not a gamers' card.

If you want to do games, read the Dell Forums posts and, probably, get the 6600 if you can find a decent price.

Re: previous answer.

AGP cards are backward compatible. 8X card will work in 4X slot but at 4X speed. That's OK.

For all sorts of really good info on this, go to Dell Forums. Search on "geforce 6200 4550". You will see that lots of folks have this card working in 4550 machines. Specifically, despite the card's stated 300W power supply requirement, the 4550's 250W power supply will run it fine. Dell under-rates its power supplies. Note that the folks there advise that the more capable 6600GT card will also work in a 4550.

Generally, the Dell Forums are very useful for all sorts of questions about these aging machines. I go there all the time now - sign up!

I've got a 4550 and bought an evga geforce 6200 AGP8X 256MB card online today. Haven't received and installed yet but I'm not worried about it.

The Geoforce 6200 uses either an AGP 8X slot or a PCI-Express slot. As long as your machine has either one of these slots available there is no reason you can't run it. A quick check on the specs of a 4550 shows that you only have a 4X AGP slot and standard PCI ports -- so, unfortunately, you won't be able to run it.