Will my computer be able to handle HL2?

[Liquidsphere]

Here are my computer specs:

Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
512 MB of ram
120 GB
Intel extreme graphics 82845G (onboard)

I know that I need a new video card but my motherboard doesnt have an AGP slot, only PCI slots. I need a video card that can handle HL2 on at least normal settings. Please recommend me some of the best PCI cards out there but worth its price. Thanks :thumbs:

 

[-TaNaKa-]

I dont know that much about cards, but for the rest your pc looks fine. Enough memory and space and CPU is fine.

 

[blahblahblah]

I would recommend the Nvidia Geforece FX 5200 PCI card. There are several different versions of the card floating around. There is a 128 bit memory bus and a 64 bit memory bus of the 5200 card available. You want the 128 bit memory bus as the 64 bit memory bus will give you horrible performance. There is also a 128 MB RAM version and a 256 MB RAM version. You want the 128 MB RAM version as the 5200 is not able to use the extra 128 MB of RAM properly. However, the 128 bit memory bus is very important, so if you can only find a card with 256 MB RAM and a 128 bit, I would get it.

I looked around on newegg.com, and found several FX 5200 PCI cards available for sale. However, some of them are 64 bit version and some of them labled as 128 bit version are really 64 bit versions (they are mislabled). Before you buy a specific card, go to the manufacturers website and find what memory bus (64 or 128 bit) the card uses. If the information is not available on the website, either send them an email or find another card manufacturer. At a quick glance, I could not confirm any of 128 bit cards that newegg sells at any manufacturers website. You will get a noticeable performance increase if you get a FX 5200 128 bit version over the 64 bit version.

As for performance, even though the 5200 brags about DX9 capabilities, it is really too slow to run games in DX9 mode. However, the 5200 will run good in DX 8 and DX 7 modes. That means you should be able to run HL2 at a decent resolution (1024 by 768) at a DX 7/8 quality (which still looks excellent in my opinion).