Will this onboard Video solution work temporarily?

[chibigoten]

I've been wanting to upgrade my old system for a long time and I finally found the time/money/deals to do it. My problem is I cant afford to buy it all at once.



I currently have an ATI Radeon X850xt PE 256MB that's AGP and its about 5 years old. I was hoping that I could buy a system with a decent modern on board video card to use until I can save up for a nice new card.

What I found in my price range was this mobo here.

My question is how well would that newer on board ATI Radeon HD 4200 compare to my once-top-of-the-line X850 AGP card?

My hope is to have enough in 2-6 weeks to buy a modern card to replace it.

 

[rolli59]

The 4200 is not compare able to your old 850 and gaming on it is going to be a struggle except for older games with some lowered details.

 

[chibigoten]

Could you define older games? I dont really play that many modern games and my main reason for dropping the x850 is lack of support for some dx10 features that dont allow me to play newer games.

Right now I play suppreme commander 1, Team Fortress 2, warcraft 3, world of warcraft, and counter strike source.

How do you suppose it would handle those games? I can deal with a sizable performance loss so long as playing these games does not become impossible.

Thanks.

 

[rolli59]

Take a look at this hierarchy chart http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-geforce-gtx-480,2598-6.html 4200 is five tiers below your current card (on level with the next generation before yours). It is not going to help you with dx10 (although supported just lacking on power) but then again it is just a stop gap until you get a gaming card.

 

[Herr_Koos]

Could you define older games? I dont really play that many modern games and my main reason for dropping the x850 is lack of support for some dx10 features that dont allow me to play newer games.

Pretty much all new games still support DX9, so I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. There are VERY few DX10/11 exclusives.

 

[chibigoten]

Pretty much all new games still support DX9, so I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. There are VERY few DX10/11 exclusives.

Supreme Commander 2.

"Minimum Vertex and Pixel Shader 3.0 required. Please ensure system has current video drivers."

I have the latest drivers and was told it was a dx10 thing.

Im just concerned about this onboard video being able to play any of the current games I listed.

 

[Herr_Koos]

I see. Well, on-board video definitely won't make a dent in SupCom 1.

By the way, I assume you are running Windows 7 or at least Vista?

 

[rolli59]

4200 supports shader 3.0 the 850 only had shader 2.0. It had nothing to do with DX10. Shader 3.0 has been supported since geforce 6xxx series and ATI X1xxx series although support was limited on the lower end cards.