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Old-ass PCs that still run games pretty well
- Thread starter DonMigs85
- Start date
Ha, this is my set-up EXACTLY (except I've only oc'd to 4.2 using "turbo mode" on my motherboard (so not genuine oc -- it ramps up to 4.2 only when it needs to) -- when I went to 4.3 I got bsod after a while).
I'm in the same boat -- thinking about a 970, but the extra 670 keeps my frames up for now. I can run Witcher 3 on ultra (except for hair works off, tree draw distance on high) and I get 55-60fps. It runs every thing else I throw at it at 60 fps on ultra. even Metro Last Light.
I will rock these GPUs until CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 comes out, then we'll see.
OverBlood 3
Banned
My PC is in dire need of an upgrade
GTX 660 3GB version
AMD FX-4100
8GB RAM
Although it runs everything I try on it :
I need me a hand me down CPU
GTX 660 3GB version
AMD FX-4100
8GB RAM
Although it runs everything I try on it :
I need me a hand me down CPU
Little Old Man
Member
I've just realised that the 5770 is a 2009 GPU! I purchased mine in mid-2011 to replace a NVidia 8800GT, and so I had always assumed it had come out not long before that.
Chucke1992
Banned
Core 2 duo E8400 + 9800 GT 512 MB + 4GB RAM is fine in 1024x768 even now (though in BF3 it crashes due to lack of memory during the long play session)
Dee Dah Dave
Member
Still running an i7 920 clocked at 4.2Ghz. It's pretty ancient in computer terms but still does the job.
From about early 2012 to mid 2014 I was running a fx 4100, 8gb ram and 6870 and that ran most games perfectly fine. TBF my monitor was 720p so the lower resolution helped but it was still decent. I played watchdogs at a better frame rate than the ps4 lol. Id take framerate over resolution anyday and tbh 720p on PC probably looks better than 900p on console with all the extra bells an whisles like AA etc.
As a long-term PC gamer I'm annoyed that hardware advanced amazingly fast in the 90s when I didn't have enough money to upgrade frequently, but now that I have enough money to upgrade somewhat frequently I can't bring myself to do it because the individual steps are too small.
4 year old, mid range at its time, dell inspiron 5110n laptop
Nvidia Gt525m 1gb
4gb ram
Intel i5 2430m 2.4ghz dual core
Still running the latest games. Got through MGS V, Wolfenstein, Alien Isolation, GTA V and a ton more. However it is really at the end of the road now I think.
Nvidia Gt525m 1gb
4gb ram
Intel i5 2430m 2.4ghz dual core
Still running the latest games. Got through MGS V, Wolfenstein, Alien Isolation, GTA V and a ton more. However it is really at the end of the road now I think.
My i5-2500 and HD 6850 were good enough to get me through Witcher 3 with decent enough fps to get through death march. Bought them both in 2011. I suspect I can probably get by for another couple years. Been awfully tempted to get a new GPU though, so I suspect it will last a year more tops.
Tarin02543
Member
i7 3770k / gtx 760 here, runs everything up until now without any problems whatsoever (2560 x 1440)
will upgrade once next gen console will be out (perhaps 4 years)
will upgrade once next gen console will be out (perhaps 4 years)
dr. apocalipsis
Banned
For op or anyone else with a compatible 775 board without a Q9X50 already, buy this for 30 dirty bucks, slighty better than a Q9650. It comes directly with the holes and the sticker needed to use it on a regular 775 board, but you still need to look for a patched bios with the microcodes needed to run this.
This thing still have better IPC than anything AMD can sell to you, surpassing actual consoles CPU by a mile. So you would be covered CPU wise for the entire generation.
I recently moved a GTX560ti from a 3,2Ghz Q9450 to a 3,2Ghz X5650 with no improvement at all. I still had heavier OC profiles for the Q9450 waiting for a better card, what probably won't happen, since I will move the GTX560ti back to the Q9450 once I get a mid range Pascal for the Xeon. If card isn't dead by then, ofc.
hooijdonk17
Member
Does it bottleneck you in anything though? I mean, I still stick with an FX 6100, which is probably roughly around that performance, and I don't feel CPU constrained in anything, like ever..
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
Meanwhile I spent the weekend being slightly disappointed in the performance of an extra computer I found in the basement. E2160 @ 2.0Ghz with 2GB of ram, I put a cheap GeForce 730 in it but the processor just cannot handle 360 level 3D gaming. Ah well.
EDIT: Damn I can buy a used processor for this chip family for under $15. Let's do this.
EDIT: Damn I can buy a used processor for this chip family for under $15. Let's do this.
Not really, but in certain games, I feel like performance could be better, like Fallout 4. It's definitely still competitive, but at the same time, it's showing its age, and I know I need something better.
hooijdonk17
Member
For the money you would spend on a better CPU+Mainboard, and considering the benefits you would get, you are probably much much better off selling your 270X and getting a Fury.
texhnolyze
Banned
The only time my Phenom hits its CPU limit is on Batman AK, which is a bad port in the first place.
KillerMan91
Member
Still using my over 5 years old Phenom II X6 1055T as a CPU and it has no problem with any games. Costed also only something like 150€ when I bought it. Still remember how every article recommended quad core Phenom as no games took advantage of six cores and quad cores were a bit cheaper. I have changed GPU of course couple of times (Now running R9 380)
GreatestHits
Member
Well reasons for my PC are I pay child support and am still a contractor at the moment. But my main PC is an XW6200 server. Dual-core Xenon processor at 3.4 GhZ, which is probably it's best feature. It's got the best gfx card it can handle, a Radeon 6900 HD, 3GB. 6GB of ram but it can take 8. It just started bluescreening too, but I do tech support for a living, I'm just hoping the hardware doesn't all crap out. (I believe it's the ram or possible vid drivers, but all my USB ports just went out save for 3
I also somehow managed to run Unreal Engine on it so I develop on it too. Sad I know. I also use it for Ableton Live for music production, a not-so lightweight Digital Audio Workstation. You're lucky you can run windows 10.
It's a bit better than a 360 or a PS3, well quite a bit better. I just installed Dragon Age: Origins, and besides being a much better port, it's probably the game I've played that shines the most over last-gen consoles. Skyrim with mods, New Vegas with mods are 1080p when I want them to be as opposed to what they are on consoles. Go old PC's!!!!
edit: I work for an architectural company and their main PC's are Doghouses (multiple graphics cards, etc), I work on lots of computers with 32 GB's of ram, and it makes me want to spit, lol
I also somehow managed to run Unreal Engine on it so I develop on it too. Sad I know. I also use it for Ableton Live for music production, a not-so lightweight Digital Audio Workstation. You're lucky you can run windows 10.
It's a bit better than a 360 or a PS3, well quite a bit better. I just installed Dragon Age: Origins, and besides being a much better port, it's probably the game I've played that shines the most over last-gen consoles. Skyrim with mods, New Vegas with mods are 1080p when I want them to be as opposed to what they are on consoles. Go old PC's!!!!
edit: I work for an architectural company and their main PC's are Doghouses (multiple graphics cards, etc), I work on lots of computers with 32 GB's of ram, and it makes me want to spit, lol
on my computer, like Josey Whales
Dictator93
Member
PC hardware has only been VRAM limited for the last 5 years. Otherwise, you could basically still keep using that GPU from 2010 in the latest game no matter what.
A q6600 probably still gets 30fps in nearly all games.
A q6600 probably still gets 30fps in nearly all games.
ss_lemonade
Member
I used to have a 2500k + 6970 that I gave away to my brother. It has served me and my brother well for years and ran even the latest games fairly well at decent settings.
We replaced the gpu though earlier this year, swapped it out for a 970.
We replaced the gpu though earlier this year, swapped it out for a 970.
bengraven
Member
I'm running similar and yeah, other than the AAA games made for next gen, I'm still running everything pre-2014 like a boss.
I went from a 640 (that I got 4 years ago), to a 750ti in November. That has been my only upgrade in the last 4 years, and it cost me $100.
Kurt Angle
Member
my mac runs Facebook games at 60 fps
PedroPanache
Member
For the longest time, I used the "turbo mode" at 4.2ghz. I decided I needed those few extra frames and watched a youtube vid about CPU voltages and tried my hand at doing it "properly". Many blue screens later and I'm running a stable 4.4ghz. I've definitely got my moneys worth out of my two 670s. GTAV was rock solid and Fallout 4 is mostly 60fps, aside from the problem areas. PC is hooked up to the HDTV, so 1080p is as high as I need to go. It seems like I could get another year out of them, at least. Thank you Sony and Microsoft for your conservative approach this gen.
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
The two upgrades I made to my desktop were a 750Ti and an SSD. It's only SATA2, but you don't notice any lack of speed.
That's barely cutting it these days, but old gen stuff should run pretty decently.
hooijdonk17
Member
And that's like really a strange thing.. It's almost like back to 90s when 3d accelerators were sold on how much ram they had (I sold my 4MB Voodoo and got a 12MB Voodoo 2, etc..) which basically disappeared after hitting around 64MB..
And now we are back to square one.
Seriously? The P4 3.6 + 6800GT that I tried absolutely COULD NOT run Unreal Engine 3 games properly. It was a very sub-par experience ~20fps at best. Even Bioshock 1, which was not UE3, ran terribly.
It can play STALKER quite well, though, oddly enough.
MT Framework games, like Lost Planet, also run at ~5-10fps on that P4.
I know... I guess "dinosaur" doesn't mean it's not a four-thousand pound ton of flesh which could smack down a modern-made tank xD
I guess, but I bought an i5 4690k 3.2GHz a few months back for my new PC - and surely that's significantly weaker than his 1st ed i7?
texhnolyze
Banned
This is how my old-ass PC handling the Witcher 3. Mix of high/ultra with hbao+ and hairworks on.
Can safely lock the framerate at 30.
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
I had a similar set up until this year, but I'm not sure if running out of memory for a four-year-old game running in 4:3 768p really counts as "fine", haha.
alexandros
Banned
It does. It can't handle 60 fps in Black Ops III and Black Flag but it did pull off a nearly flawless 60fps in MGSV. This processor was released in late 2006.
I have first-hand experience, I completed Gears of War on that machine back when it was originally released. A combination of high and medium settings, 1280x1024 resolution, it never ever dropped below 30fps and usually stayed around 45fps. Maybe the CPU had heat issues and was throttling? Prescott CPUs were running pretty hot.
DonMigs85
Member
Not too long ago I upgraded this old Q9550 machine with a 4GB GTX 960. Runs much cooler than the previous GTX 470 and now I'm mostly CPU-limited in games. Near the end of the year I might upgrade to at least a Core i5-4590 and a cheap B85 motherboard and stick with it till at least 2020 when 10nm or 7nm processors are out (for some reason I don't like Skylake, it seems to have a number of flaws in its design and the IPC and added instructions are barely improved much over Haswell. Plus Kabylake is supposed to bring AVX-512 support supposedly.)
Avoid the cutting edge. It costs so much money.
Phenom 965 X4 @ 3.4 GHz (4 cores)
used 560 Ti 448 Core edition (Skyrim Edition) - bought it for $50 in May 2015 (similar to the 750 Ti)
on an Antec Earthwatts PSU marked as 380 Watts. Buy nice PSUs and apparently you can push the limit.
Only thing I don't like is no USB3 or SATA3.0 (6 Gbps) on the motherboard. My SSD (purchased 4 months ago long after SSDs were cutting edge) is faster than the mobo can handle. The year before I bought a 60 GB SSD for the same price as the 250 GB currently in my PC. AKA, technology decays in price rapidly so stop being an early adopter chump if you have any other financial obligation in your life.
What do I get for all this? A bunch of extremely cheap Steam games. I can buy new releases for new gaming hardware and not play them, or buy 6 Steam games for the same price and not play them on my older hardware. It helps I'm at 900p or 768p (monitor and TV) lately. Still, the 560 does 1080p60 well on all the games I play (nothing new).
I have far more games than I know what to do with. No need to buy Far Cry 4 and upgrade my PC to do it when I have Blood Dragon to worry about and just beat Far Cry 3 last year.
Phenom 965 X4 @ 3.4 GHz (4 cores)
used 560 Ti 448 Core edition (Skyrim Edition) - bought it for $50 in May 2015 (similar to the 750 Ti)
on an Antec Earthwatts PSU marked as 380 Watts. Buy nice PSUs and apparently you can push the limit.
Only thing I don't like is no USB3 or SATA3.0 (6 Gbps) on the motherboard. My SSD (purchased 4 months ago long after SSDs were cutting edge) is faster than the mobo can handle. The year before I bought a 60 GB SSD for the same price as the 250 GB currently in my PC. AKA, technology decays in price rapidly so stop being an early adopter chump if you have any other financial obligation in your life.
What do I get for all this? A bunch of extremely cheap Steam games. I can buy new releases for new gaming hardware and not play them, or buy 6 Steam games for the same price and not play them on my older hardware. It helps I'm at 900p or 768p (monitor and TV) lately. Still, the 560 does 1080p60 well on all the games I play (nothing new).
I have far more games than I know what to do with. No need to buy Far Cry 4 and upgrade my PC to do it when I have Blood Dragon to worry about and just beat Far Cry 3 last year.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
The current system I am running this on is a Core2Duo Windows XP machine with 2gb of RAM and a Radeon 6800 HD with 1gb.
Through Patreon support on my Youtube channel I managed to save up $600 last year to buy a new PC (Core i5, 16gb of RAM, modern Windows, etc.). I just have to find the time and space to put it all together.
Because it was Patreon that got me there, I decided to make a video out of the process of building a new PC when I get there, and wanted to show the difference in how games run on my XP machine versus how they'll run on the new machine and was shocked to find that most of the games I own on Steam actually run fine. It was a struggle to find something that genuinely had a poor framerate (and by poor, I mean below 25-30fps).
Skyrim, Revengence, Gas Guzzlers Extreme, Beseige, Blood Dragon, Painkiller HD, DiRT 3, State of Decay, Ultra Street Fighter 4, it all runs just fine.
Of course, the key there is that Windows XP support was officially abandoned two years ago, so all the games that would potentially run like garbage on this system aren't XP-compatible. But what does still run on XP generally seems to run pretty well.
Through Patreon support on my Youtube channel I managed to save up $600 last year to buy a new PC (Core i5, 16gb of RAM, modern Windows, etc.). I just have to find the time and space to put it all together.
Because it was Patreon that got me there, I decided to make a video out of the process of building a new PC when I get there, and wanted to show the difference in how games run on my XP machine versus how they'll run on the new machine and was shocked to find that most of the games I own on Steam actually run fine. It was a struggle to find something that genuinely had a poor framerate (and by poor, I mean below 25-30fps).
Skyrim, Revengence, Gas Guzzlers Extreme, Beseige, Blood Dragon, Painkiller HD, DiRT 3, State of Decay, Ultra Street Fighter 4, it all runs just fine.
Of course, the key there is that Windows XP support was officially abandoned two years ago, so all the games that would potentially run like garbage on this system aren't XP-compatible. But what does still run on XP generally seems to run pretty well.
I just built a new i7-6700/GTX970 rig a couple weeks ago, but my previous PC was from 2008 and still managed almost everything I threw it very capably. Old rig specs below:
-i7 920 (very first gen i7 processor)
-RadeonHD 4890
-8GB DDR3 RAM
Granted my new PC blows it away in performance, but most of my current Steam library was running just fine on the old setup at Medium settings(and some High).
-i7 920 (very first gen i7 processor)
-RadeonHD 4890
-8GB DDR3 RAM
Granted my new PC blows it away in performance, but most of my current Steam library was running just fine on the old setup at Medium settings(and some High).
neurosisxeno
Member
I've had my i5-2500k for about 5 years now, and it still handles everything fine. I upgraded from an HD5850 to a GTX 670 when they came out, and combined with my 2500k I haven't had to upgrade anything in my system since then, and still handle everything at 1080p on high-ish settings.
texhnolyze
Banned
The most common wrong perception about PC gaming is that you have to upgrade your PC annually because PC games have to run at 60fps at the highest settings. There are people who can't afford that, and thanks to the robust customization of PC games, people can still run the games even on old-ass PC. They can tinker the settings to their liking, sacrifice IQ for 60fps or sacrifice framerates for maximum IQ and settle for 30fps lock. A well-built gaming PC can last about as long as console life cycle, or even more.
neurosisxeno
Member
The last few years have been pretty friendly to PC Gamers. A lot of developers were hamstrung by developing for the consoles--which used DirectX 9.0c--first and not really optimized for modern hardware. Since the new consoles use DX11/12 and a new version of OpenGL, expect games to be substantially more demanding as well as having lower requirements for better IQ.
If you bought an i5-2500/k or even an FX-83xx, and a 660 Ti or 670 (or HD 7870/7950/7970) odds are you are still in the clear to run most games at great settings on 1080p.
DonMigs85
Member
Cards with less than 3GB VRAM might become more prone to stuttering though with upcoming games, even at 1080p. Even some older games like Bioshock Infinite can easily exceed 2GB VRAM usage.
Transistor
Banned
My 6950 still runs things pretty well, as long as I don't try to max out the settings.