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Best video cards for Athlon XP 2000+

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First post, by fisher

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What would be a good video card to use on an Athlon XP 2000+ for gaming?

Motherboard is a K7VT4A+:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/VIA/K7VT4A%2b/

Thanks in advance.

Reply 5 of 35, by appiah4

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imi wrote on 2020-02-11, 14:41:

XP 2000+ seems a bit weak for those.

Yeah try to go for a Barton 2500+ and Radeon 9700/9800 for those.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 6 of 35, by douglar

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appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-11, 15:01:

Yeah try to go for a Barton 2500+ and Radeon 9700/9800 for those.

Barton 2500+ and ATI 9800 was what I was running back in November 2004. That Barton overclocked very nicely.

I think Ill always remember the day that half-life 2 came out. I started playing at about 6pm when I got home from work. A short time later I realized it was 4am, I was quite hungry, and I was going to have to call off from work on Friday because of a severe half-life 2 addiction.

Off topic, but if you are going to play HL2, consider checking out Black Mesa 1.0. Finally in beta. 15 years later, but requires contemporary hardware.

Reply 9 of 35, by matze79

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6600GT DDR3 +

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 10 of 35, by cyclone3d

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Why even bother with old hardware with HL2? Pretty sure the last time I played through it was with Windows 10. Not going to have any downsides unless you want to not have a constant 60fps or whatever refresh rate your screen does with v-sync enabled.

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Reply 12 of 35, by cyclone3d

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fisher wrote on 2020-02-11, 18:32:
cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-11, 18:26:

Why even bother with old hardware with HL2?

Forcing the limits of old hardware is really fun for me. There are no other reasons.

Don't get me wrong, I really like old hardware; I just like maxing out the specs of systems unless there is a specific need for something to be slower for stuff that won't work on faster systems.

It's what I did back in the day and still like to do.

Making a system to run certain games at painfully slow speeds is just not my cup of tea. I likes my steady 60+ fps.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 15 of 35, by foil_fresh

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i run a 2200+ on an nforce board, the radeon 9600xt is very suitable for the job. i have a fx5600 i want to test down the line but i dont expect much difference.

max payne, gta3, half life, rtcw, soldier of fortune, quake 3, unreal tournament - all of them run quite well. most run at 1024x768 with decent in-game settings. i'd say 70-80fps is expected with this setup, sometimes more.

although a 6800 would be fine, i think it would be wasted on a pc this slow. a 2004 card with a 2002 cpu... you get the idea.

Reply 17 of 35, by appiah4

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Personally, on anything below a 2000+ I go with a Radeon 8500/9100. For 2500+ and beyond, the 9700/9800 are no brainers. With Socket 754 I go with an X800 or an X1950. I don't like nVidia much if you couldn't tell. 😁

Last edited by appiah4 on 2020-02-12, 08:44. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 18 of 35, by RacoonRider

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fisher wrote on 2020-02-11, 14:19:
appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-11, 14:03:

Really depends on what you want to play.

3d games like GTA San Andreas or Half Life 2.

Does HL2 work on your modern system? I completed Portal a few weeks ago on Athlon3200+ with 9800Pro and to be honest it was far from perfect. Compared to Portal, HL2 features the same core engine but more detail in general and requires snappier control for shooting stuff. I would not play it on AthlonXP.

Although the first time I completed HL2 it was on Celeron 1700MHz and Radeon 9600XT. And no, the game did not work well.

Reply 19 of 35, by appiah4

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I initially played HL2 on a Palomino 2000+ with a Radeon 9600PRO and it ran OK-ish at 800x600. It won't run smoothly short of Athlon64 class CPUs and Radeon 9800Pro class GPU, and even then probably not above 1024x768.

I never played GTA3 (or any other GTA games post GTA2 to be honest) but from what I remember it was a huge resource hog as well.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.