PCA Forums

Looking to run the following games FarCry, half life2, Tribes Vengeance, Painkiller, and ut2004. Some of the guys only have a Radeon 8500LE. will these cards run the games good enough to play. CPU's range form Althlon 1.2GHz and up and some only have 256 ram. but i suppose we can level all the ram out so everyone has 512. I know painkiller and UT2004 will run on anything so that's not a problem. There is even a Geforce FX 5200 around will this be decent. I'm not sure where the 5200 lies.

it depends on how "well" you consider running well is.
My MINIMUM specs for a lan rig would be

1.6 gig cpu
80 gig hd (30 gigs for games and mods 25 gigs for file sharing, 25 gigs free to get files)
512 ram
9600 or fx 5700 (shutter)

that being said my lan party rig is quite a bit faster then that, but what you find exectable and what your buddy or anouther random person does, is in the eye of the beholder

I have seen UT2004 run on laptops with original Radeon graphics, if it runs slow, lower detail settings that it is all, the Geforce FX 5200 is actually slower then the Radeon 8500, even though it is newer, it is on the bottem end of all the FXs and in performance you can see it

here is al old review which shows UT2003 with both of those:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphi ... ament_2003

just an example of comparison for some of the older ones

But I think most of us here have some pretty speedy LAN rigs.. My first LAN rig was an XP1800+ @2100+ speeds or 1.67ghz (I think?) with 512MB PC133 on an ECS K7S5A with a Radeon 9000 and 2 80GB HDs. My current LAN rig is an XP2500+ @ 3200+ speeds or 2.3ghz with 768MB of PC3200 a Radeon 9800 Pro and 2 80GB HDs.. So like BillyGoat said, it's all in the eye of the beholder..

for me its
a xp 2500
1gig 2700
ati 9600 128 ram
160 gig hd

its also my home rig this week
starting to build a replacement at the moment do
jumping to a AMD 64 3200 or better
will have 1gig ram 3200
ati 9600 or better card dollars will decide
160 gig hd

There is even a Geforce FX 5200 around will this be decent. I'm not sure where the 5200 lies.

yeah i recently upgraded from that card, the 5200 plays ut2004 on medium to low settings in 800*600, and will even play hl2 on medium setting at 800*600. and i found that it even runs FarCry on low to medium at 800*600.

personally i think you should dish out the money for atleast a 5900 xt and overclock the thing, its what im running at the minute at 484/890. everything runs at 1280*1024 on medium to high.