Minimum graphics card required?

[Ian]

Anyone here using a 3 year old graphics card still? I'd be interested to hear how some games like HL2 run on them

The reason I ask is I know a few people using GF2, GF4MX and FX5200 cards and games still run fairly well - all apart from some of the very latest. What do you think the lowest card that could run most things well would be?

I'd think a 9600 or maybe an FX5200 could run most things ok - but I'd still like to know from someone using one!

 

[Reefsmoka]

Nowadays if your being realistic I wouldnt go lower than a 9800pro/6600GT dude to most games being directx9 that are worth playing .

 

[Me__2001]

well i have a 128MB 9600SE and its not too bad, i borrowed counter strike condition zero off a friend to see if i should bother getting it as i wasn't sure how/if it would run, it seemed to play just fine on default settings although i did notice the temps where quite high (45c if thats what you'd consider high?) so i never bothered cranking the detail up, i also play Hitman, Rogue Spear and SOFII no problem, but then i think my CPU makes up for its pathetic performance

 

[PotGuy]

I have a 9600 vanilla, and it has done surprisingly well on nearly everything I've thrown at it, including half life, doom 3 and battlefield 2. I mean it won't do any fancy shader effects or 16xAA or whatever but it gets the job done, even if it is on medium/low detail. The only game it can't handle (unsurprisingly) is FEAR demo, even on lowest i only got about 5fps.

I have a feeling though this may be somewhat down to having an old 2.6 intel, which is somewhat... crap

 

[floppybootstomp]

The friend of mine who wants to upgrade his video card (that's another thread) has been using a vanilla flavour 9600 for about twenty months now and he's run Halo; Far Cry and HL2 with it, though obviously not with high settings.

Only problem he's had is Far Cry very occasionally will crash to task bar.

And I've run those games on an FX5600 256Mb card Ok (which, incidentally, I have up for sale right now ).

 

[Chris Pickering]

Using a FX5500 myself, and it's pretty poor for all things game wise. No AA use at all of course, and it means I'm playing FEAR at less than half of it's possible looks just to keep the frame rate up. Half Life 2 lets me crank things up to everything maxed out except the AA tough. Oddly Quake IV suffered much more than FEAR frame rate wise.

So if anyone wants to pass a decent review card on to a freelance journalist for a bargain price, it'd be much appreciated