Old games to play with a shitty video card (GeForce 7200GS)

Lu

Lu

Pokemon Master
Hey guys.

My current video card (a Radeon HD 5770) died on me yesterday and my only backup card is a GeForce 7200GS. This card is known for being quite useless for gaming, it's a low end model from like 6 years ago... So no more TF2, L4D2, DiRT2, COD or Duke Nukem Forever for me for a while... I don't have much money so I'm just buying a replacement from nvidia (a GeForce 550Ti) I'd like to upgrade but.. That's the best I can afford :S.

What old or non demanding games do you recommend?

I just started Machinarium, A friend of mine gifted it to me with the humble bundle but i never paid attention to it... great game, it really makes you think outside the box...

 
A shitty card from 6 years ago that was bad back then? Reminds me of my old comp. As for games, I have no idea, as I only got into PC gaming recently and have very little idea in terms of benchmarks.

 
Here are some good old (or non-demanding) games from my Steam library.

Scratches

Machinarium

The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition

Monkey Island 2

Half Life 1

Indigo Prophecy

 
HL2, (don't say you can't, because I used to run it on a MX4000) Halo: CE, Dungeon Siege, CS:S, HL:S...

Those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head... I played all except Halo on my MX4000, so they will definitely work on a 7200GS.

 
Morrowind, HL 1-2 (I can confirm 2 on my old shitty vista which graphics card was a year older than your model.) KOTOR 1 and 2 and the rest of my suggestions are RTS.
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Half-Life: Blue Shift and Half Life: Opposing Force are both pretty decent. I personally liked Opposing Force better.

 
Super Meat Boy isn't old, but might run okay.

For older games, there's Deus Ex, the old X-Wing series if you have those and are in to that sort of game (Tie Fighter, etc). Civilization 2 should be okay. I'm not really familiar with NVidia cards, would Far Cry run on that card?

 
Old video games, they're better than new ones.

System Shock 2, Unreal, Deus Ex, Thief The Dark Project, Thief 2 The Metal Age, Half Life, Opposing Force, Planescape Torment, and arguably Morrowind. I run a GeForce 6150 SE and it runs like a pro on it.

 
Terraria dude, you will not regret it. Others in my library- Deus Ex, HL1, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Serious Sam 1 & 2 and maybe Morrowind.

 
I've played all of valve games
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and FYI: aince valve updated the HL 2 engine to the EP2 version it's nearly impossible to play at the lowest settings with this card... before that it was ok
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...

I'll get most of your suggestions guys thanks (:

 
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. It's old, it's kinda shit, but it's fun. It's a rare specimen: a decent Star Wars game(that's not an RTS or TPS, it's an FPS)

 
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. It's old, it's kinda shit, but it's fun. It's a rare specimen: a decent Star Wars game(that's not an RTS or TPS, it's an FPS)
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There's also Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. Both are Quake III engine games instead of pre-Quake II level graphics like in Dark Forces 2.

 
People forget how well Half Life 2 runs on lower systems. It's part of the reason why it was such an attractive game back in 2004 or so. Everything from Episode 2 and onward might chug a bit though.

I am actually running this and other things on an even older, less powerful laptop than yours. I have customized the laptop and the copy of windows that runs it. It's really nothing like it was when I first got it. You'll be surprised how much you can pull out of it without even resorting to overclocking.

Find yourself some guides on the internet. Don't be afraid of tweaking thingss in the Windows Registry or services.msc in particular, you can always create backups.

As for the games I have installed:

  • Halflife 1 & 2
  • Deus Ex
  • Morrowind (if you liked Oblivion)
  • Battlezone 2
  • Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2
  • Guild Wars
  • Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition.
  • The Longest Journey & Dreamfall
  • Vampire the masquerade: Redemption (I reason to believe its spiritual successor VtM:Bloodlines will run less than HL2 despite it having the same game engine, due to its poorly constructed Python shell that is supposed to handle scripting. If HL2 has no framerate issues on your (hopefully tweaked) system, give it a go.)
  • Jade Empire


I disabled Specular and HDR Lightening, and enabled simple shadows where I could.

I can recommend the Baldur's Gate series as well. It's not really a 3d game at all, but the artwork and sprites it used were still the best / end of an age. If you're into (much) slower gameplay, good story telling and a lot of deathly themes, I can recommend Planescape: Torment as well.

There are probably more interesting things out there still. I'm just a bit limited by my HD space.

 
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