$100 Gaming PC - What would this run?

[NezumiiroKitsune]

I think I can he be of help. I'm currently using a P4 2.8Ghz with HyperThreading, 512Mb DD1 @ 200Mhz, a ATi Radeon 9800 PRO (AGP) with 256Mb of DDR1 @ 324Mhz, and a 122Gb IDE HDD, on Windows XP.

It quite badly needs replacing in truth, the HDD has began to fail, my sister infected and crammed it with malware, thousands gifs, adware etc... and there simply isn't enough RAM to multitask, or even unitask. However, when playing games, apposed to general web browsing, it's quite proficient. I would be quite confident to say it would do alot more had it been new.

It has managed the following:

Unreal Tournament 2003 (All full specs, online, 40+ FPS)
Dawn of War : Soulstorm (1920 x 1200, 20 - 40FPS, all high)
Neverwinter Nights (1920 x 1200, all high, smooth framerate, online)
Zoo Tycoon (All high, Smooth)
Fallout 2 (Flawless)
Diablo 2 (Online, Flawless)
Mark of Chaos (A little lag even low specs, later missions I doubt would be playable)
Morrowind (Flawless, high FPS, all high)

In regards to Fallout 3, I'm sure it would not play, however I had some success with Doom 3 through Ubuntu, so I'm sure it would have played on XP.

The standard for games in the past half a decade seems to be 2Gb of RAM, and of the last 12 - 18 months, Dual core as a requirement has become a common sight on packages.

 

[SimuLord]

That's a midrange PC in 2005. So pretty much anything that year and older should run fine on it with at least medium settings. Anything newer than '07 is right out.

 

[nofear220]

So a Pentium 4 3GHz with HyperThreading, 1GB of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 256MB GPU comes in at $100. Any lower and I'm suddenly slipping into 256MB RAM territory and a DirectX 7 card, so that is spec wise the balance.

What can I look at running well with that?

You can run tetris?

 

[ItsAPaul]

Shouldn't be too much to upgrade to at least 2 gigs of ram. I'm pretty sure the entire reason my computer runs so well is maxing out ram at $40 per 2 gig stick (though its more expensive if you need ddr3). Also don't worry too much about the on-board ram on graphics cards, worry about the frequency, shader version, stuff like that.

 

[Yoshi4507]

well, it could run... solitare!

 

[Estocavio]

snip

The answer to all of your problems.

It's useless to me in this case because I don't have the system yet (or at all, if it ends up really being pointless).

Fine.

My "expert opinion" says save your money, your set up looks really bad.

I second this - There is not a chance in hell you could run anything recent, unless it had Requirements lower than what your looking at. In closure, it is impossible to get a good gaming PC for less than $500.

 

[RowdyRodimus]

snip

The answer to all of your problems.

I know that link was for the OP, but thank you so much for it. I'm horrible at knowing what the specs on a computer are or if I know, what they mean and with my cheap laptop it's hard to know what will run on it. Thanks to this, I now know that I can run the Star Wars Empire at War games I wanted to play. YAY!!!!

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

Unless you're better at haggling than I ever imagined possible, no rig that costs $100 is going to run any game released in the last 2-3 years on anything better than VERY low settings (if it runs them at all, which I doubt). I paid about $600 for my new rig (GIGABYTE GA-P55 Mobo, i5 750, GeForce 9800 GT, 8GB DDR3, Corsair TX650W).

 

[migo]

Shouldn't be too much to upgrade to at least 2 gigs of ram. I'm pretty sure the entire reason my computer runs so well is maxing out ram at $40 per 2 gig stick (though its more expensive if you need ddr3). Also don't worry too much about the on-board ram on graphics cards, worry about the frequency, shader version, stuff like that.

Right now RAM prices are really expensive, 12-18 months ago they were much better.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Nothing recent to be honest. There are games made in 2004 that would make that machine cry (Doom 3, Far-Cry, possibly even Half-Life 2).

 

[crimson5pheonix]

What OS are you going to use? Because if it's Windows (to play games on), Windows will cost more than your entire system. That should say something. Namely, "save some more and get something that can actually do something".

 

[Vhite]

I think it might have run Oblivion at lower settings at best but hell, its still Oblivion. There are still lots of perfect games that you could run Baldurs gate 2, Diablo 2, Freelancer, Warcraft 3, Gothic 2 and so on. But nothing like Doom 3 +.

 

[SkoopMaster]

any game that came out in 99 and under... yeah your not gonna get any were if you just want to spend $100 but if you can get HL2 to run smoothly on it congrats.

 

[veloper]

So a Pentium 4 3GHz with HyperThreading, 1GB of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 256MB GPU comes in at $100. Any lower and I'm suddenly slipping into 256MB RAM territory and a DirectX 7 card, so that is spec wise the balance.

Make sure it is a P4 3ghz with a FSB of atleast 800mhz. The 533 version is much slower in games. Also you will want atleast DDR400 or DDR2-400 in that.

2 GB RAM is still recommended for a 3ghz P4. Games that required a fast single core back in the day would often use 2 GB. With 1 GB everything should run, but expect alot of harddisk swapping and short pauses during play.

Anything less than that and it ist even worth the bother.

What can I look at running well with that? I'm sure UT2K4 would run, as it's one that actually works on my Netbook. What about Source SDK games? Doom 3? Fallout 3? Anything above that, or am I looking at lower? (this is assuming 1024x768 or possibly 1280x1024 resolution)

Doom 3 should run perfectly on this rig. The game was tailored for early p4s and terrible geforce FX gpus, like the 5800. You get a late p4 and a 6800. Easy.
It's not a great game though, with all the closet lurking monsters, but the visuals were, for the time, very advanced.

Fallout 3 will run choppy, but you may still find it acceptable, because low FPS won't kill you in VATS mode.
I played FO3 on an ahtlon64 4000+ for a while and it's was playable on low to medium settings, but nothing more. More than 2 baddies on screen the framerate would drop from 50-60 fps (just the landscape) to 10-15 fps (group of raiders). The p4 should fare almost as well.

Oblivion will run worse than FO3, because it's less optimized. No VATS, so low frames will hurt. Back when tes4 was first released the only CPU that would run the game at acceptable fps was the athlon64 FX.

HL2 and TF2 should run at decent rates, but the newer Source stuff like Left4dead won't, not at all.

 

[Zeromaeus]

I know a guy who negotiated a $200 dollar PC to run Crysis...
Then again, I suspect he may have abused various discounts and membership things...

 

[Corpse XxX]

Do they still sell that slow pc's today? i think you should save your money, wait a while and get something that can run more than Solitaire or tetris..

 

[viranimus]

This thread made me sad

Actually this thread makes me quite happy. I love seeing potential being maximized. /applaud!

As for new... not much if anything would run well. However, I speculate you could get some games running on it. Probably extremely low frame rates, but it would likely load. Thing is you mentioned mostly shooter-esque type games, which shooters are typically dependant on higher frame rates, making this an uphill battle. Slower type games, RPGs, RTS, ect would likely do better. I would venture to say Oblivion or the like would likely be a top end game for graphics.

Framerate wise, Best comparison I could give is I put together 2.4g celeron processor, 2gb of ram, 512 vc and got about 28 fps on WoW, which for wow.. is playable.


As others have said.. your game range you need to look at titles made about 2005-2008 to get any decent performance out of them, with minor game setting tweaks.

Couple of things people wouldnt consider, that would have a major effect on what your trying to do.. Is the Front side bus speed between the mobo & Processor. Higher the better because in PC building that alot of times is an invisible bottleneck, and in part I think its why alot of people think you need a bigger parts than you actually do.

Another thing to consider is the video card interface. If youve got a PCIE slot... the expansion possibility really opens a configuration like this up. The processor is fairly solid, the ram could use a little bump but The VC is the key. Especially seeings how you can get a 1gb vc in PCIE for about 50 or so dollars (which also helps make up for the lower amount of ram, at least for games)

Honestly the best thing I can suggest is stop by [link]www.canyourunit.com[/link] and check some of the games you would consider playing in order to compare their system specs for Min and Rec. But also keep in mind, that just because CURI tells you No, doesnt mean you CANT do it.. just means it isnt going to do well. (ive played many games on an old PC i used to use, that CURI swore I wouldnt be able to from begining to end. But they were typically RPG games which again frame rates and lag are infinitely more tolerable on.

 

[brumby]

decuple your budget. ($1000)
but even then it couldn't run anything that came out in the last year on high.