A real "budget" gaming RIG

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Hulk

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 4, 2005
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Just like the title says - my old man just bought himself an emachines desktop.

Naturally, I wouldn't think anything of it - but I was reading the specs on it and this caught me eye: "nVidia GeForce 6100 PCI express slot available".

So, I'd like to know what you guys think if I got myself a cheap old pci express video card and what kind of gaming I could do on it.

It has an AMD Sempron 3300 2.00GHz 1600Mhz 128 L2 cache.

Ram is at 256MB but it's no problem upgrading that since ram is cheap anyways.

I'd just like to know what video card you guys recommend I get for it, and if it is even worth it.
 
old and PCI-E are kinda of an oxymoron right now...

Really depends, do you know if it has a PCI-Express slot or as more than likely the 6100 is an intergrated graphics card on the motherboard, and you have no upgrade path for a video card.
 
In the Hot Deals section the Monarch sticky thread has a 6600GT for $99 AR. You certainly could go more GPU, but this would seem to scale nicely with the CPU and is cheap.
 
Yeah, nVidia never made a 6100 card, rather, it's an on-board video chipset. It'll play modern games at 800x600 with all the video options turned off, and driver performance set to maximum at around or under 30 fps, from what the reviews tell.

But it will make old games run just fine. Now's your chance to catch up on the great sleepers and big hit games. Get Heavy Gear 2, Battlezones I and II, Wing Commanders IV and V, Jedi Knight, Deus Ex, and more important than all those combined, System Shock 2. System Shock 2 is beatable in 30 hours and as soon as you win you'll want to start a new soldier. Plus I'll bet you can get all those games for $10 each.
 
You need to upgrade that computer to 512mb of ram reguardless of the gaming situation. Selling a window's xp system with 256 is stupid.

If you have an agp or pcie slot, get a 6600gt and call it a day.
 
OK so I just bought one of these computers mainly for school. For $300 I don't think you could even build your own. It also came with a 100GB 7200rpm HD.

Question - what video card should I get? Should I still get the 6600GT or is there one that might be slightly better for my setup?

Also, how much power does the 6600GT take? The computer came with a 300 power supply but it can be easily upgraded.
 
I would think that if you added 2 gig of ram and a 660GT along with a new PSU you should be able to run just about any game out there now for awhile. The cheap 300w PSU that they probably have in there might have issues with a 6600GT. You could probably do all of that for around $260-275 if you shop around. You could cut back to 1G of ram and save $65 also...but then you may need to add later on or if you want to run something like BF2 smoothly.
 
That CPU/mobo combo would work out really good with a 6600GT or a 6800np or something in that range.

The PSU may or may not take the abuse. Better off getting a different one than trying to find out whether or not it will stand up.
 
The above card does not support shader 3.0.

Any other input on which card to get? Can someone write down like 3 or 4 cards and their performance as well as the price?
 
I would like to spend as little as possbile to tell you the truth $100-$160 or so.

However, if there is a card that has double the performance and says costs like $170 over a card that is $100 of course I would like that one.
 
Also keep in mind I have a AMD Sempron™ Processor 3300+, so I do not want to get a video card that costs a lot of money that will be bottlenecked by the processor, if thats even possible these days.
 
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