Pentium D plays Just Cause 2 and Fallout: New Vegas on high

[Guest]

Firstly I have an HP pre-built with a Pentium D 925 at 3.0Ghz, 2GB DDR2 800 RAM and a GT 240 which I recently bought.

I asked a few questions on Tom's Hardware a few weeks ago on whether a Pentium D system is worth upgrading and I also asked if it could play the latest games on LOW settings and LOW resolutions and they all said HELL NO!

Though they said that it could handle 2008-2009 games just fine on MEDIUM down till LOW settings, so I just bought the only GT 240 available locally, in the UAE, I got the GT 240 1GB DDR3, in case you wonder why I didn't get a G92, it's because I have a 300w PSU. Also the card is running in PCI-E 1.0 at half the bandwidth

Anyways, I got it and tried out some games and the results... AMAZING!!!

First I played Fallout: New Vegas, by default the settings were set to high, (There is LOW, MED, HIGH and ULTRA).
So settings High 4xAA and 8x Anisotropic Filtering.
Resolution 1680 by 1050, which is the resolution of my 20 inch monitor.

And what framerate did I get,

MIN: 20
MAX: 60
Average: 30

So people just said that it wasn't a very demanding game so I risked getting Just Cause 2 (This happened today).

And what are my results in Just Cause 2?

Settings were automatically set to Medium-High with 16x Anisotropic Filtering and 4xAA, Shadows are medium, water is very high, object detail is high, only shadows are medium and SSAO is low. The resolution is 1680 by 1050.

The GT 240 PhysX is on, so it's also doing PhysX do reduce the load on the CPU.

I started the game, the frame rate was 15-25, though mostly it hit a solid 20, it was running fine but soon in intense moments it became unplayable so I turned off some NVIDA features like Point light specular and Bokeh filter and enhanced water which didn't even make a difference, though I have to admit the enhanced water does, the difference was minor though only recommended for multiple GPUs exclusive to NVIDA.

Turning those off brought my my frame-rate up to 40 and now the games runs at 20-45 with an average of 22 in complex maps and 25+ in most of the game.

Next thing you know I was happy playing Just Cause 2 at acceptable settings at a high resolution with a 4 year old Pentium D.

I then decided I have to share this with you people because you told me that it couldn't do ***.

 

[gamerk316]

At that resolution with that GPU, the GPU is probably the bottleneck. If you replaced the 240 with something more powerful, you won't be seeing any improvement whatsoever.

Likewise, you need to really concern yourself with cooling, as Pentium D's freqently overheat, reducing clock speed to cool down.

Finally, the 2GB RAM is going to come into play at some point during longer gaming sessions; I'd expect performance to steadily decline over time.

That being said, 22FPS is hardly playable for most people here. And I'm *very* surpised on some of the reported numbers for some of these games, given how my Pentium D system coupled with a much more powerful 9800GX2 struggled very much in less intensive games...

 

[gamerk316]

I also note, that if you paid over $200 for that system, you got totally ripped off. You can get a decent Sandy Bridge or AMD rig for around $650...

 

[Guest]

My dad bought this computer 4 years ago, and it had a 64MB GPU, a 7300 LE!!!

I just upgraded it a few weeks ago to a GT 240.

My Pentium D runs at 50 degrees Celsius MAX, my room temp is 23.

I think you mean to say CPU when you said GPU, I already know that.

22 fps isn't common, I just started playing the game, it's just one map, and for every level I change the settings to get me 25+ but nothing is ever LOW except SSASO,

There are just certain settings that don't make much of a difference in how he game looks but make a huge difference in framerate.

And also, games are beginning to rely on GPU more nowadays,
BUT you are totally missing the point,

I am running the latest and best graphics games on a Pentium D when people said it can't do nothin'

I can run Black Ops too,

The 9800GX2 is actually 15% faster than the GT 240.

I never play games for over 2 hours, I'm 14 and my eyesight get's worse every year, I've got -4,75 in both eyes which is bad and my eyes hurt too since I'm not an adult yet.

But don't you agree that people are totally under estimating these old processors?,

Also, if anything above 25 is playable? right?
Some people can play at 15-20 believe it or not.

A lot of places in the game I get 35fps, and if I'm not comfortable with the 20s, I can get 10fps extra by just reducing the very highs to highs and highs to mediums,

ALSO I have 4xAA and 16xAS, If turn off AA and AS I get 30+ but I just keep them on as I'm fine with 20+.

I'm beginning to think that Pentiums are still viable for 2011- NOT for gaming, but if they can run games, they can do Microsoft Office, and Facebook as for HD, it's processed by your GPU so there ya go/

Don't worry I know every thing about computers, and how mine is out dated, I'm not really going to buy any more games and start PC gaming as I have a PS3,

And my RAM, there is nothing wrong with it, what's wrong with 800MHz, it's still used today and if you mean the amount of memory, I actually have 2.5GB, a 2GB and a 512MB module.

 

[Alpha135]

mn96, you gave me will to live. I'm 14, with an identical PC, a Pentium D 3.0 GHz, and the only affordable card is a GT 240. People said I won't be able to play s*it with this configuration, but after I read your post, I realised there's hope. If you can play new-ish and demanding games at 30 FPS, the ones I plan to play will be just fine. Just one question: what PSU did you use?

 

[Guest]

mn96, you gave me will to live. I'm 14, with an identical PC, a Pentium D 3.0 GHz, and the only affordable card is a GT 240. People said I won't be able to play s*it with this configuration, but after I read your post, I realised there's hope. If you can play new-ish and demanding games at 30 FPS, the ones I plan to play will be just fine. Just one question: what PSU did you use?

I used a lite on 300w PSU with 18 amps on the 12v rail. The amperage on the 12v rail needs to be 18+.

 

[samuelohagan]

I have a delta 300 watts with 18 amps on the 12 volt rail, and it runs a gts 250 fine.