I've never been much of a PC gamer, and my video card knowledge is about the size of a smiley (:)) icon. I have a PCchips board I purchased at the end of 2005 which includes support for AGP 4x graphics. It includes an onboard 32MB video which surprisingly handles 'Max Payne 2' without any lag, however GTA: SA or any simulator will bring it to a crawl with a frame every 2 or 3 seconds.

I recently won a video card on eBay for dirt cheap in hopes to play some of my favorite games on low settings (800x600). It's a eVGA GeForce FX 5200 128MB DDR AGP (8x/4x). I didn't read where this eBay'er was located before I won the auction and realized it's going to take a good while for this card to arrive.

My question is this: What games do you expect I could play on low settings without horrible lag? The computer I'm installing this on a well-cooled Intel 2.93GHz Celeron D (Prescott) overclocked to 3GHz with 512MB RAM -- soon to be 2x512MB (1GB) by the time the card arrives, hopefully.. I hate waiting for USPS.

Here are a couple of the titles I'm hoping to enjoy on this new card. If not, oh well -- I paid only a few dollars for it and it retails online for $30 to $60. I may be expecting too much out of a $30 video card, but nonetheless I won't be going backwards if it doesn't live up to my expectations -- 128MB has *got* to be better than 32MB onboard.

Games:

* GTA: San Andres
* Gran Turismo 4
* Half Life 2
* Quake 4

Any input is welcome. Thanks!

You can play all those games at low and at a maximum resolution of 1024x768, but that's about it.

you should be ok with most games at low settings with the exception od Doom 3, Half Life source, Far Cry those are some video card killers. Most anything older then 2 yrs should work out fine

Gran Turismo 4 is exclusively for PS2, not available on PC.

You should be able to play all three of those games on low settings. I had Geforce 6600 which is a little better than 5200, and I could play those games on medium settings. So yea, You shouldn't have much lag or at all playing at low settings.

Although you're going to use 4x AGP, which will probably be slower.

Gran Turismo 4 is exclusively for PS2, not available on PC.

You should be able to play all three of those games on low settings. I had Geforce 6600 which is a little better than 5200, and I could play those games on medium settings. So yea, You shouldn't have much lag or at all playing at low settings.

Although you're going to use 4x AGP, which will probably be slower.

Oh, I didn't know that it [Gran Turismo] was exclusively for Playstation.

I have a board that will do 8x but my new house is a mess so finding it may take a while. Should I assume that going from AGP 4x to 8x will be a 50% increase in overall performance?

make sure u can install that video on ur board, since ur mother board already has integrated chip its less luckily that it will accept extra one!

nope, going from 4 to 8 won't be 50% increase. I mean it doesn't all depend on mbs and xxx, try to check ur card processor and where its clocked.

A celeron is not much of a gaming system but it is fine for Half Life 2 and max payne. You can run Half Life 2 at 1024x768 with medium to high settings, depending on how much ram you have. No AA or AF as it is barely supported by that card, be sure to turn Valves HDR off.

Keep in mind that is a 4x/8x card so you will be running at 4x but you will barely notice a different for the games that you will be playing.

Thanks for the information, guys.

Here's what I get from my 64MB GeForce FX Go5200 running at 244 core and 477 memory (overclocked) and 4X AGP, P4M 2.8GHz @ 1.6GHz (underclocked and undervolted, max battery life), and 512mb PC2700 DDR333 RAM. My Maximum screen resolution is 1024x768

Doom 3 runs at the lowest settings at 15fps, no exceptions
Half Life 2 runs at 35fps at default settings (not bad, not max but not lowest)
Far Cry at lowest settings peaks at 201 fps and dips as low as 65fps, could definitely be turned up
NFS Underground 2 runs at 60fps @ 1024x768 with everything on except blur, light trail, enhanced contrast and overbright (and of course AA/AF)
NFS Most Wanted runs at ~30FPS @ 640x480 car reflection low, reflection update on highest, Overbright and Visual treatment on, and ~25fps with 2xAA enabled.
NFS Carbon runs at 22fps at 640x480 with everything on high except AA/AF.
Sims 2 at default settings around 25fps @ 1024x768
GTA San Andreas at ~20fps at 640x480 everything low, ~45FPS at 1024x768
Company of Heroes gets around 25FPS at lowest everything.

As you can see, its not all bad. Sure you could definitely go for an upgrade, but for its time it was the ONLY DX9 low-end card (if I remember correctly the ATI radeon 9500 and lower were only DX8, whereas 9600 and above are DX9)
If you use Rivatuner and disabled the DX9 shaders (pixel to 1.4 and vertex to 1.1) you could probably get better performance out of it, and I dont think you'll notice much difference. By the way, at the moment the GeForce 6600GT on PCI-Express is $70 CAD on TigerDirect.ca, and the 6600GT AGP I believe is $90 CAD.

Oh, and your hopes of this card being better than integrated will be well served... Almost every add-on card EVER MADE will out-perform integrated graphics. Anything made after 2003 will seriously mop the floor with integrated.