Question about old type PCI cards!

[Ratbag]

My nephew has bought a crap pc for £60 out of Loot and is wondering why he can't play any games on it. It actually has a reasonable P4 2.? CPU but it has integrated Intel graphics, and is about 4 years old I guess. It has an Intel 845G chipset with one free pci slot.

Question is, if I get a geforce fx5200 pci (which some sites are still selling, and I know its cack but its better than the Intel) will it work? have there been any tweaks to the spec of the slot etc that might preclude it from working? will all BIOS's allow pci graphics to override the integrated guff?

I'm guessing its a straightforward job but I thought I'd try and confirm before I go ahead. Been out of the GPU loop for too long....

 

[Darg]

What games are he trying to play on it?

 

[Boogle]

Use a PCI FX5200 on one of my machines. It plays UT2004 just about, and Empire Earth. But don't expect much more than that. Its not much faster than GMA950 tbh.

 

[TheRealDeal]

TBH my pc i got upstairs is a 2.8ghz p4 with 500mhz front side bus 1.5 gig
of pc2700 ram and 9800pro struggles with games of today at a resonable
res and low setting pretty much no chance of a decent gaming experience on
that pc with a 5200fx. That pc prob only decent for talking online.

 

[Darg]

CPU is probably a 478 socket so maybe you could look around for cheapy mobo with an AGP slot. Get a decent AGP card and it'll play games for a while yet.