Is FX5200 ok for Half Life2?

I'm a casual first-person gamer and on a tight budget. I just wanna play Half Life 2 without buying those fancy and expensive videocards.

I remember from previous reviews (years ago) that although FX5200s have poor showing in playing latest games at the time (when Half Life2 was launched), I'm nevertheless interested just to get on with it.

My question is, will FX5200 do the job? Doesn't matter if it plays at lowest fps or res.

My specs:
P4 2ghz
Asrock P4i45GV (integrated sound & video)
Maxtor 40gb 72krpm
256 mb RAM DDR266
XP Home (no SP1 updates)
Creative 5.1 speakers
AOC 17" CRT flat

An FX5200 should be able to play the game if you turn down the graphic settings and play at low resolution. You should also be concerned with the RAM too, because with only 256MB, it'll be using the hard drives for virtual memory quite a bit.

your first question raises another very important question...

have you ever played HL2 on an 'okay' system?

... the minimum eh?

usually isn't the best idea... just skip going out for lunch for a week... add that money to the pile and get something a little bigger... a little better

you will be much happier and hey you might even shed a couple lbs.

[edit] misunderstood quote, my apologies... [/edit]

The 5200 will strruggle with HL2, It's the weak GPU that is the problem. It will probably be able to handle 800x600 with reduced details, maybe even 1024x768 with super low detail, assuming a decent CPU in the system.

256mb of system RAM is horribly underequipped for Half Life, as people have said you should have 512mb system ram minimum, 1 gb would be even better.

yes. i have a dell
celeron 2.4
2x256ram
fx5200 128mb in pci

it plays call of duty 2 great even with a.a.x2
the smoke even looks good. in dx7.0 or 8.0 though

it played halflife good not sure about hl2 though.

Kind of like what I have (The X1300 but mine has 512MB's lol I know its too much ram but it sounded like fun !)

I have to say for a cheap card it does play HL2 realy well and Episode One too !

If you want to play HL2 only, get an ATI card. HL2 was designed on and basically for ATI, Nvidia's framrates for the money compared to it are much much lower unless you buy like a 7950 GX2 or an 8800. Like they said, X1300.

With all the suggestions you guy's have...I think I better start skipping lunch and dinner money to be able to buy a decent card after all. If you see no post from me the coming weeks...pls pray for me!

For me, I dislike my bfg 7800 agp card for hl2dm. I lag on the big maps As far as I am concerned agp is dead, any mobo w/out pcie, I don't want it.

hl2dm ftw!!

3200 xp
2gig of ram
7800 bfg gc

i'd recommend getting a 9550. i have one, i got it for free, but they run like $30-40 bucks. i love it b/c i got it for free, but its really not a bad card. i get pretty nice frames with everything turned up, no aa or af. so i'm really really happy, especially for the price. heh. but, yeah, if you have the money, definately buy higher. definately. with good 7 series and 6 series cards being sub-or close to $100, just save up.

As some other guy said

I would recommend you get 512 of ram and a 6600GT AT LEAST

Just to jump on the bandwagon here, I would invest in some ram and a ~$100 card to really be able to "play." IMO there is a difference in playing a game and just experiencing it on the lowest settings. :?

Thats cause of athlon xp, its much slower than a64 or newer proc's. A big map needs a lot of physics/objects calculated and ur cpu may be the bottleneck..

The FX5200 on the lowest settings can perform about 30fps. That said you'll need to set in console fps_max to about 25-30 to smooth out the fps. On my old c1.8 with a FX5500 I get around 35fps but at times it drops below 15fps unless I use the "fps_max 25" to allow my computer to keep a good connection. More cpu time for the connection, a good protection against lag hacks, and it skips frames allowing old GPU's to keep up. I would suggest you use fps_max on any GPU but only below the avarage fps of that GPU.

The FX5200 isnt a good deal for any slot. What slots are available on your mobo and whats the watts of your PSU? If your mobo is PCI only the X1300 is available but shop around because this one has a high price. Note also the X1300 requires a 300watt PSU.
http://www.compusa.com/products/pr [...] Video_Card
If you have an AGP slot and really want something cheap that should perform well try the 9600XT for $49.98. It will beat the socks of the FX5200. The 9600XT requires a 300watt PSU.
http://www.compusa.com/products/pr [...] Video_Card
I would suggest something with a little more power and the X800pro for $99.98 is a killer deal.
http://www.compusa.com/products/pr [...] Video_Card

???

what is this cintiq?

----------------------------
EDIT
OOOOH

i heart google

sounds pretty awesome... and looks pretty expensive. WOW.

u guys are totally underestimating fx 5200. i have a fx 5500( same thing but 25mhzhigher clock) but i have it for pci. i play cs:S at medium settings dx9 1024x768. and it is a crazy oc'er. im talking 350/515 from 275/350. and if u really want something good for pci, get a diamond x1300 256 mb. dont get the visiontek, only 64bit bus.

EDit: he has the wierdest mobo. i checked it out, u need to buy like some riser card or something to get an agp4x/8x connection. only pci slots. something like my crippled sony pc (asus custom made kirin-v mobo)

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought Nvidia performed better in Half Life 2?

I'll have to say no, ATI performs better on source games, according to THG.

Use '-DXLEVEL 70', '-DXLEVEL 80' or '-DXLEVEL 81' in the 'advanced parameters' section of each game profile.

Add it, load game, then configure it.

Remove the -DXLEVEL 70 before reloading the game (it resets all video defaults, but enforces a DirectX 7.0 code path for GPU).

Sure the FX-5200 can run DX 8.1 code path, but it runs like crap, and you can't 'change' Hardware DirectX Version within the game itself, only as a parameter passed to the game .EXE by Steam.

I use this on my laptop (Radeon Xpress 200 Mobile edition) as it supports DirectX 9.0b code path, just it runs twice as fast using the DX 7.0 path and looks 'almost as good' (esp at 25+ fps, vs under 15 fps using defaults).

It is possible Valve corrected this as I reported it to them like... over a year ago... and it is under 1 page of code changes.

The problem is, the card hardware supports a DirectX 9.0 code path, but it is only powerful enough to use a DirectX 8.1 path in Half-Life 2, and they didn't set up 'profiles' for each card, just feature set masks.

Doing this will double your frame rate during heavy combat on cheaper video cards (GeForce FX 5600 or older), esp on older PCs.