Video card requirements

[mackindale]

I'm going to buy an old video card for a PC made in 1995. It has a 133 MHz CPU and 64 MB RAM. Would a video card with 6 MB RAM be too much for it?

 

[uncfan_2563]

what could you possibly using that for?

 

[mackindale]

I'm gonna try to do some old gaming on it. Otherwise the PC is useless and I don't think it should end it's life all alone and unused. I just don't want to make it sad. It was my first computer and I love it with all my heart. It's nearly family to me. I might even see if I could play some Crysis on it. My laptop can't handle it, but maybe a desktop PC could, and with a graphics card, I'll be all set.

 

[uncfan_2563]

lol were you kididng? how could you possibly attempt crysis on that. For one, best video card you could get for a PCI slot would be a 9500GT but even then, you cant at all run winXP or vista to attempt crysis. I'm sorry if this hurts but, stick that in the basement or just leave it as it is. The $50 gfx card you'd be getting for it would be worth much more than the pc itself

 

[mackindale]

Ha, I see one on ebay for 10$. And of course I'm kidding; Crysis isn't even a fun game.

 

[uncfan_2563]

lol okay but on a serious note, what are you planning to do with it. i understand your urge to run it...say as a linux system for using it for fun, you know, just to remember the old days. but you cant expect any game from the 21st century to work on that.

 

[mackindale]

but seriously, if I bought a GPU, would my CPU be able to handle it?

And what will I do, you ask? Of course I don't expect games from after 2000 to work, but a lot of decent DOS and early computer games exist.

 

[uncfan_2563]

oh yeah you should be good for DOS games, you might not even use a gpu for those, as a lot of those are rendered by the CPU. Could you perhaps give me an example of a game because well, i'm not very familiar with those old games and the requirements.

 

[mackindale]

Well, it's not about the games, but I'm just sick of 16 colours. Windows 98 on 8 MB RAM and 75 Mhz CPU isn't that slow but if only I had more colour.

 

[uncfan_2563]

yeah well. you could go to newegg and get the cheapest PCI video card (Radeon 7000) and honestly, that would suffice. You could actually pull of playing games like Doom 1/2 on it.

 

[mackindale]

But that's the problem. If my CPU isn't strong enough, I won't be able to use the graphics card.

 

[uncfan_2563]

right. thats why i'm saying get one that is as cheap as possible.

and i'm kinda confused. in the original message you said, 133 MHz CPU and 64mb ram and now u've said 8 mb RAM and 75 MHz CPU. Which one is correct?

 

[mackindale]

Oh, well I recently bough more RAM and a new CPU, so windows 98 ran on the old stuff and now it's quite a bit faster.

 

[uncfan_2563]

oh okay. so yeah, get a cheap video card that supports OpenGL and DirectX 7 and you're pretty much good. Sure, it'll probably have a faster core than your cpu, but you can only get a gpu thats so weak, you almost have no other option. Does this computer have any 2d/3d accelerator in it atm?

 

[mackindale]

It has nothing right now, but I'm gonna try the Matrox MGA IS-STORM R2 with 6 MB RAM. Do you think that could handle Crysis, or at least some games?

 

[uncfan_2563]

lol you have some sense of humour my friend. Side Note : That thing smokes GTX 295's everyday =D

Serious Note: Yeah honestly, as long as it gets you 32 bit color, you're fine. Most of the games you will be able to play will be handle completely by your cpu (Doom for example) so game performance shouldn't matter

 

[mackindale]

Well, I hear that the GPU gets instruction from the CPU, so if the CPU is too weak, then would the GPU fail?

 

[uncfan_2563]

it would slow down. we generally use the term bottleneck for that because the CPU cannot feed the GPU information fast enough for the GPU to go as fast as possible. Games that do not utilize a 3d API (DirectX + OpenGL) don't even tap into the Graphics Hardware. In that case the graphics is done by your cpu and your graphics card doesn't matter. Games like Doom and a lot of games prior to 2000 just used that technique and didn't bother with 3d acceleration.

Nutshell: If the game you're going to play doesn't use 3d hardware (which it probably wont), your graphics chip doesn't matter much. So just get a really cheap one

 

[mackindale]

Ah, thank you. I see perfectly now.

 

[uncfan_2563]

mhmm. have fun with that stuff, i love messing with legacy hardware