Anyone playing games with a high-end video card on a low-end Athlon 64 X2 system?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ant
  • Start date Start date
A

Ant

Hello!

I cannot seem to find benchmarks, articles, stories, etc. on how
high-end video cards (e.g., NVIDIA 8800 GT with 512 or so MB of memory)
run on low-end systems like an Athlon 4600+ X2 system (nothing is
overclocked) with Windows XP Pro. SP2 (IE6.0 SP2 and all updates).

I am currently using a EVGA GeForce 7950 GT KO (512 MB; PCIe) with
1280x1024 native resolution (hate going lower due to stretching option
that look like crap on LCD monitors via VGA connections), no FSAA (0X),
and eveything at the maximum (details, features, 16X anisotropic, etc.).
It does almost fine for older games like Battlefield 2, Far Cry, DOOM 3,
Oblivion, C&C3, Orange Box/Half-Life 2, Call of Duty 4, FEAR, etc.
However, it does not do so well with current/newest games like Crysis
(see http://pastebin.ca/884075 for Crysis v1.1's island GPU benchmarks),
World in Conflict (see http://pastebin.ca/885198 for the results), etc.

Is it still OK for me to get a faster video card (one of the newer ATI
or NVIDIA cards [8800 GT?]) on my old system? I don't know if the
bottleneck is my CPU, video card (GPU), or both for the newer games. My
detailed computer specifications can be found here:
http://alpha.zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/computers.txt (primary
computer).

Thank you in advance. :)
--
"I used to own an ant farm but had to give it up. I couldn't find
tractors small enough to fit it." --Steven Wright
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Ant said:
Hello!

I cannot seem to find benchmarks, articles, stories, etc. on how
high-end video cards (e.g., NVIDIA 8800 GT with 512 or so MB of memory)
run on low-end systems like an Athlon 4600+ X2 system (nothing is
overclocked) with Windows XP Pro. SP2 (IE6.0 SP2 and all updates).
Click to expand...

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/$500_gaming_pc_upgrade/

That should help you.

I basically did this with the exception of a few things. This
article assumes that you already have a case and decent PSU and
possibly the drives. In my case, I did; Antec Sonata II case with an
Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU. I put out the additional $20 to get the
GeForce 8800GT SSC card, plus the additional $40 and went for the
Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 motherboard, and still clocked in under $500USD.

Now I'm not much of a gamer; I flight sim, so this worked out
quite well, plus leaves me room to go quad core when Phenom prices
start to drop. But you'll get some good benchmarks on the card and
platform you're looking for there. Just keep in mind that this article
came out before the G92 cards were released, but should still be fairly
current.

BL.
- --
Brad Littlejohn | Email: (e-mail address removed)
Unix Systems Administrator, | (e-mail address removed)
Web + NewsMaster, BOFH.. Smeghead! :) | http://www.wizard.com/~tyketto
PGP: 1024D/E319F0BF 6980 AAD6 7329 E9E6 D569 F620 C819 199A E319 F0BF

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A Guy Called Tyketto said:
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Click to expand...
That should help you.
Click to expand...
I basically did this with the exception of a few things. This
article assumes that you already have a case and decent PSU and
possibly the drives. In my case, I did; Antec Sonata II case with an
Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU. I put out the additional $20 to get the
GeForce 8800GT SSC card, plus the additional $40 and went for the
Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 motherboard, and still clocked in under $500USD.
Click to expand...
Now I'm not much of a gamer; I flight sim, so this worked out
quite well, plus leaves me room to go quad core when Phenom prices
start to drop. But you'll get some good benchmarks on the card and
platform you're looking for there. Just keep in mind that this article
came out before the G92 cards were released, but should still be fairly
current.
Click to expand...

Perfect. So, I should get about 30 FPS average on my old system with a
GeForce 8800 GT card in Crysis demo with high settings. Too bad it
doesn't mention other cards like the recent ATI cards.

Now, I need to figure out what to do with the fullscreen TV loss with
8800 cards. :(
--
"I used to own an ant farm but had to give it up. I couldn't find
tractors small enough to fit it." --Steven Wright
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Ant @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org (Personal Web Site)
| |o o| | Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL): http://aqfl.net
\ _ / Please remove ANT if replying by e-mail.
( )
 
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