Help the Amish Catch Up On PC Gaming...

[AmishNazi]

Ok so for the last four to five years I've been stuck with a Nvidia GeForce 420 MX. Otherwise known as CRAP.

GeForce4 MX 420 Fill Rate:
Triangles per Second:
Memory Bandwidth:
Maximum Memory:

1 Billion Texels/Sec.
31 Million
2.7GB/Sec.
64MB

Needless to say I haven't been able to play any new or recent PC games in the last 2-3 years, and definitely not on high settings.

Tomorrow all my new PC parts should be here, so I can begin to play catch up on all the great games I've been missing out on.

I went with the 8500 GT while I'm playing catch up, since I figure with all the overtime I've been working lately, by the time I catch up the 8800 and newer cards will be cheaper.

This is where you people come in. I'm looking for suggestions and reminders of games that I've missed out on. Anything RTS, FPS, Adventure, Racing (arcade not sim). Please nothing that is a grind fest or a mmorpg, because I don't have the time patience or money for those.

Stuff I'm already downloading.

F.E.A.R.
Far Cry
Call of Duty 2
Company of Heroes
C&C3
Oblivion (GOTY edition.)
The Orange Box

+rep for stuff I had forgotten about.

Dark Messiah
Supreme Commander
Battlefield2
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
GRAW & GRAW 2
Total War Eras

[Vegetto]

half life 2??

dark messiah is pretty dang good as well

[AmishNazi]

Yeah I forgot about Dark Messiah.....

I'm most likely getting The Orange Box once it comes out though.

[Nano Fox]

Garry's mod thats a must for HL2.
Dungeon siege 2, Vampire the masquerade - bloodlines. Battlefield2/2142, Warcraft 3/Frozen Throne?, Supreme commander, Bioshock. Uh I'll have to think about the others though.

[AmishNazi]

Saving Bioshock for after I get my Vidcard..... Warcraft III, DS:II both ran all right on my previous card, but I will DL again to see them on my PCI-E.

Thanks.

[Alucard]

Some of those could twitch on the 8500 unless you play on lower settings. But lets see... Yeah, I came to help at the wrong time. My memories blank right now.

[Nano Fox]

Oh whats that one game, oh yea starwars empire at war/corruption expan, those are pretty great ones! Still drawing blanks tonite perhaps alucard will remember some of the ones I can't. Rise of Nations? Age of Empires 3? gonna stop now .. must sleep..

[Alucard]

If you're gonna go star wars games then KOTOR1-2 amd Jedi Empire are the best ones. Adventure game you should give Still Life a shot. Really enjoyed that. As for fps games, MOH: Pacific Assault rocked. I'll be back.

[Catharsis]

Im going to second Battlefield 2142. I have been told the online play is bad becouse its full of scrubs, but if your downloading the games anyway you wont be able to play it online anyways. Its a fun game to play against bots when you just need to blow off steam. Plays like Counterstrike but its got an arcade feel(UT) and it has mech's/vehicles aswell.

[Zachalmighty]

Supreme Commander

[Chronos]

I'll be closely paying attention to this thread since all i have is company of heroes, which came with my motherboard, and ghost recon advanced warfighter 2, came with videocard.

So far i'm really pleased with the graphics. I even turned AA on and everything ran without a hiccup on the games i mentioned. GRAW2 seemed even faster than on the 360, and looked better even at lower res (1280x1024) since that's the highest my monitor goes. quite impressed and i may not get the gtx now.

*just acquired supcom, oblivion, and tomb raider

amish, make sure you get oblivion GOTY edition (unless ur downloading) b/c it comes with all the expansion packs.

[Vegetto]

awesome mods for oblivion too

[Decado]

Is an 8500 GT a good card? If it isn't the equivalent of a Radeon 1900xt (or better) I'd stay clear of F.E.A.R., Company of Heroes, and Oblivion until you get your new card.

[Zachalmighty]

Wait, I thought the Amish were against technology?

[Alucard]

Its not a very good card, but considering amish most likely wont upgrade it for another 3 years or so then no point leaving some games for later. They'll be outdated by then. Might aswell play them on low detail. Heres some benchmarks. These figures are max fps. So to get an idea of what you will be playing at, half that and that'll be your gameplay experience with more drops then raises.

Specs of the system the cards used in.

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13Ghz, 4MB L2 Cache
Gskill 6400GBHK 800Mhz @ CL 4-3-3-5


This first one is without any AA of AF implemented. Games are FEAR, BF2141, and Company of Heroes.







Benchmarks for other games with the card that I've seen elsewhere-

Farcry
1280 x 1024 -- 15.75
1600 x 1200 -- 12.25
1280 x 1024 @ 4AA + 16AF -- 15.99
1600 x 1200 @ 4AA + 16AF --11.02

Super Commander
1280 x 1024 --10.0
1600 x 1200 -- 8.5
1280 x 1024 @ 4AA + 16AF -- 9.1
1600 x 1200 @ 4AA + 16AF -- 6.7

Basically the ATI 1650 is more powerful. Spending $70 on a graphics card wont really get you far unfortunately.