OT - How long will this run games for?

[KozMic]

I'm very new to pc's (console gaming caught ahold of me for years)

my gf bought me a pc for xmas which is fine as it runs all of todays releases up to a decent standard for me including hl2, doom3, LotR BfME, far cry and sims2,those of which i bought recently.

and was wondering, after i saw trailers for battlefield2, f.e.a.r and splinter cell-CT how long my pc will be able to handle games before having to upgrade?

i know my specs arent up to date as such but here they are:
(i dont think theyre that bad for my first one :hmph: )

AMD xp3000+ 2.7ghz
512ddr ram
Nvidia geForce fx5200 128mb memory,AGP 8x
directX 9.0c
120gb hd
MSI KT4 VL motherboard (i think)

i know you cant be accurate but any advice will be welcome, will this handle those games?

just to let you know half life 2 runs smoothly on

Textures - medium
models - high
simple reflections
shadows - high
shaders - no
trilinier (if spelt correctly)

sorry about the thread being sooooo long

and thanks for the help in advance :cheers: :cheers:

 

[giant384]

shaders=no what does that mean

 

[diluted]

The video card ain't that great, an upgrade probably wouldn't be a bad idea sometime this year. I've got a Radeon 9600XT and I'm hoping to get a X800 this year when it goes down in price. I can't afford to be completely up to date on computer hardware, I'll always be lagging behind by about a year.

 

[michaelsil1]

The video card ain't that great, an upgrade probably wouldn't be a bad idea sometime this year. I've got a Radeon 9600XT and I'm hoping to get a X800 this year when it goes down in price. I can't afford to be completely up to date on computer hardware, I'll always be lagging behind by about a year.

I wish I could be up to date with all the latest hardware it just costs too much to have the latest and greatest. I also think my next move will be to get the X800 when it comes down in price. I believe the X800 will handle anything the Gaming industry can throw at us for quite awhile.

 

[meganox]

The FX cards aren't great I hear, but I'm not enough of an expert to tell you what to get, you just need to do your research. I'd get more RAM tho, 512 is the minimum for a 128Mb card: make sure your AGP Aperture is set to 128 in your BIOS -- the rule is to set it to the same as your card's RAM (any more is a waste) BUT no more than a 1/4 of your system RAM, which basically for gaming means make sure you buy 4x as much system RAM as your card, which is why you should get more RAM before you get a 256 card.

My mate always tell me to go to futuremark forums if i have any questions, folk are apparently dead helpful and know their stuff. I'm not obsessed with the latest and greatest, although HL2 is changing that! My lowly specs are:

AMD 2400+XP ~2.0GHz
ASUS A7V266-MX
GeForce4 Ti4600 (DX8) 128MB
512MB DDR (cheap generic, stable enough but not fast)

It's just good enough for HL2, but I won't be getting any new games for a while. To be honest I care more about the gameplay than the graphics, although I do get jealous when I see my friend playing at 1280x960 4xAA at 40fps.

But then I have more fun in other ways! :cheers: