Old Graphics Cards - Any I should keep? \ VOGONS

Old Graphics Cards - Any I should keep?

Topic actions

First post, by Barley

Posted on 2025-10-20, 20:36

Barley Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 77
Joined: 2025-02-02, 19:30

I've acquired a plethora of old GPUs through various means. Before I get rid of the excess, I wanted to check if there were any uses for the cards that I am not considering.

For my W7/XP rigs, I am using GTX 980 Ti, GTX 970, R9 280X, R9 270 and GTX 750 Ti on Z97, X79, Z77, X58, and X38 platforms.

For W98, I will be using an X800 SE PCIe on P35 platform.

The cards I don't think I have a use for are: R7 260X, HD7770, HD4870, GTS250, HD4850, 8400GS. I know these cards won't work in W98. I have many better cards for XP, and they are underpowered for any more recent OS.

Am I missing any uses? Specifically, do any of these cards do anything in XP that the newer cards can't?

Reply 1 of 3, by Joseph_Joestar

Posted on 2025-10-20, 20:51

Joseph_Joestar Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 6332
Joined: 2019-10-31, 21:14
Location: Europe

Barley wrote on 2025-10-20, 20:36:

Am I missing any uses? Specifically, do any of these cards do anything in XP that the newer cards can't?

Some of those AMD cards likely support AMD True Audio. Very few games actually use that, but I figured it might be worth a mention.

On the Nvidia side, you may possibly want to keep one of the lower powered cards for 32-bit PhysX, since it's not supported on the RTX 50 series, and likely their future cards as well. I mean as a secondary GPU, only tasked with PhysX, but I'm not sure how feasible that would be.

My retro builds

Reply 2 of 3, by sunkindly

Posted on 2025-10-20, 21:15

sunkindly Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 203
Joined: 2025-09-11, 15:52

If you're interested in emulation at some point, the Radeon HDs are useful for being powerful enough while still having analog output.

Reply 3 of 3, by chinny22

Posted on 2025-10-20, 23:37

chinny22 Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 6171
Joined: 2011-08-26, 12:02
Location: Australia

I don't have any advice about any advice about specific cards, just that having 1 or 2 test cards is always a good idea.
The exact cards don't really matter though, so could be whatever is worthless on the second hand market or some of the recommended above.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware