Modern 2011+ video hardware. Forget about even the earlier GTX cards and the good HD radeons

It's going to be slow with your suggestions. after all these are bethesda games, you have to overshoot to compensate for their poor optimization

Budget option : GTS 450 GDDR5 or Radeon HD 5750.
Radeons HD 5770/6770 are good for a bit higher performance.
For DX10 hardware, I would go for 9600 GT or GTX 260 "216p"/275/285 (55nm versions, depending on price).

Forget about 8800/9800/GTS 250, you risk taking "GPU cooking lessons 101".
Radeons from HD 4xx0 series should be OK, as long as they have non reference cooling.

PS. I'm guessing those Xeons are Prescott-2M based ?

Building the Fallout 3 Retro Gaming PC Video 😀

Thanks for the advice guys. I found a 260 216 with none reference cooling for cheap, I may pick it up. If not for the power draw I'd go for a 480 as it's the netburst of video cards.
The problem I see is anything fast enough will be held back by the cpus and possibly just flow the system down. This is why I thought the 8800 would be a good pair. Maybe a 460 I found a good deal on one of them too.

agent_x007 wrote:

PS. I'm guessing those Xeons are Prescott-2M based ?

Yes
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/Intel-Xeon … G3800FA%29.html

I ended up picking up a pailt 260 sonic. Given the system I fingered this would be a good match, anything newer may have caused problems.

I've run a Radeon 6950 and 560 Ti on a nForce4 939 system. It also POSTed with a GTX 970, but I don't remember if I tried gaming. With DirectX 9 games at high resolution, there absolutely are benefits to that kind of GPU power on such an old platform.

I read that PCIe 1.x motherboards had problems with PCIe 2.0 and newer cards, but that Abit AN8 seems cool with them.

swaaye wrote:

I had read that PCIe 1.x motherboards had problems with PCIe 2.0 and newer cards, but that Abit AN8 seems cool with them.

I ran GTX 780 Ti in S939 without issues, proof : LINK

Problem with PCI-e 1.x boards starts with PCI-e 3.0 GPU's.
Since both Fermi cards (GTX 4xx/5xx) and Radeon HD 5xxx/6xxx series are PCI-e 2.0 native, they should work in any PCI-e 1.x board.

Kepler and Radeon HD 7xxx series, may not work on all PCI-e 1.x MB's.

agent_x007 wrote:

I ran GTX 780 Ti in S939 without issues, proof : LINK […]
Show full quote

I ran GTX 780 Ti in S939 without issues, proof : LINK

Problem with PCI-e 1.x boards starts with PCI-e 3.0 GPU's.
Since both Fermi cards (GTX 4xx/5xx) and Radeon HD 5xxx/6xxx series are PCI-e 2.0 native, they should work in any PCI-e 1.x board.

Kepler and 7xxx series may not work on all PCI-e 1.x MB's.

I've read of problems with some PCIe 2.0 cards on some PCIe 1.x boards. I guess motherboards vary.

swaaye wrote:

I've read of problems with some PCIe 2.0 cards on some PCIe 1.x boards. I guess motherboards vary.

Indeed, but since they work on something as funky as ASRock AGP/PCI-e (with few BIOS tweaks, more : LINK).
I think they are "OK" in compatibility department (if they don't start, you can blame MB/BIOS and not GPU's).
I should mention how good is compatibility on Intel chipset based PCI-e boards.
Here's video done on 955X based MB (from 2005), with GTX 780 TI : LINK

It really all depends, some pcie2.0 cards have problems with some pcie1 boards.

swaaye wrote:

I read that PCIe 1.x motherboards had problems with PCIe 2.0 and newer cards, but that Abit AN8 seems cool with them.

I saw this with the 8800GT, which is AFAIK the first PCIe 2.0 card from Nvidia?

But later revisions, like a GTS250 have this fixed.

I ran it with a GF 9600 GT 512MB back in the day. It was good.

The board had PCIe 1.x on nForce4 chipset. (Gigabyte GAK8-NE)

I used to sell video cards back in the day. I advise NOT to buy used G80 and G92 (65 and 55nm) cards, 90% of them are doorstops.(G92 cards were pretty much what caused BFG to go out of business.) Just friendly advice.

If you want a Tesla microarchitecture (which is what you mentioned) card a 55nm GT200 chip is the best buy.(GTX 285 is bulletproof)

Well I can tell you the Intel 4 series gpu had some issues with it on Windows 2000:
http://win2kgaming.prophpbb.com/topic109.html

So don't use that....not that anyone sane would.

I'm running it maxed out with HD mods @ 1440x900 to hell and back on a EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core216 SC. 60FPS usually with occasional drops into the 40s.

r00tb33r wrote:

I ran it with a GF 9600 GT 512MB back in the day. It was good. […]
Show full quote

I ran it with a GF 9600 GT 512MB back in the day. It was good.

The board had PCIe 1.x on nForce4 chipset. (Gigabyte GAK8-NE)

I used to sell video cards back in the day. I advise NOT to buy used G80 and G92 (65 and 55nm) cards, 90% of them are doorstops.(G92 cards were pretty much what caused BFG to go out of business.) Just friendly advice.

If you want a Tesla microarchitecture (which is what you mentioned) card a 55nm GT200 chip is the best buy.(GTX 285 is bulletproof)

Not true. I've never had any issues with my XFX 8800GTX or my EVGA 9800GTX+ OR even my hotter-than-hell-itself MSI 9800GX2 which is literally 2 8800GTS on a single card. I think I paid 25 for each of mine on eBay.

G80 and G92 are fine. Just don't buy stuff that looks like it was hit by a freight train (and some does on eBay) and you will be fine.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Not true. I've never had any issues with my XFX 8800GTX or my EVGA 9800GTX+ OR even my hotter-than-hell-itself MSI 9800GX2 which is literally 2 8800GTS on a single card. I think I paid 25 for each of mine on eBay.

G80 and G92 are fine. Just don't buy stuff that looks like it was hit by a freight train (and some does on eBay) and you will be fine.

I won't argue. I'm glad you got yourself good units.

When I said I sold video cards I didn't mean like, yay, I sold something on eBay. I mean, like, I sold liquidated refurb stock, some new store leftover stock. Have you ever seen a railcar before? Now stack video cards until you fill the whole railcar. That would give you a more accurate picture of the volume of stock I sold. I was in business 2010-2014, liquidating BFG stock was my early boost.

I will leave it there. I will not argue and I have really nothing to gain.

r00tb33r wrote:

I won't argue. I'm glad you got yourself good units. […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Not true. I've never had any issues with my XFX 8800GTX or my EVGA 9800GTX+ OR even my hotter-than-hell-itself MSI 9800GX2 which is literally 2 8800GTS on a single card. I think I paid 25 for each of mine on eBay.

G80 and G92 are fine. Just don't buy stuff that looks like it was hit by a freight train (and some does on eBay) and you will be fine.

I won't argue. I'm glad you got yourself good units.

When I said I sold video cards I didn't mean like, yay, I sold something on eBay. I mean, like, I sold liquidated refurb stock, some new store leftover stock. Have you ever seen a railcar before? Now stack video cards until you fill the whole railcar. That would give you a more accurate picture of the volume of stock I sold. I was in business 2010-2014, liquidating BFG stock was my early boost.

I will leave it there. I will not argue and I have really nothing to gain.

I withdraw my arguement then. ^ this guys word should by all means supercede mine if he has THAT kind of experience. Maybe i just have luck, idk.

I buy and sell parts a lot, probably had over 100 9800/8800 cards and never had a problem.

However I do recall nvidia haveing a bad batch of 8800 or something like that.