Radeon 9100 help

[hlabaj]

Im planning to buy a r9100 but I have a pentium 500 and 192mb ram. I know its not a "high end" system but anyway. Please tell me how much can I expect from this card on my system? Im not eypecting miracules an wild frame rates of 100fps I just want the newer games to run @ 25-30 fps on normal quality. Just dont tell me to buy a new cpu because I cant afford it.
Thanks!

 

[hlabaj]

Come on people!
Help me!

 

[selfbuilt]

Try Tom's VGA II review for examples of how various cards (including yours, identified as the 8500LE) did on an Athlon 1Ghz system. That's obviously a lot faster than yours, but it should give you a rough idea in comparison to high end systems.

 

[Blastman]

It?s hard to say, it?s really going to depend on the game. A lot of games these days require more CPU power than 500mhz.

Some games are more CPU limited and some are going to more graphics card limited. It also depends on the game and the graphics card/CPU combo you have and the resolution you run at.

Take a look at the THG VGA charts for mainstream systems and the charts for the games ?
(1)Aquanox, (2)Dungeon Siege, (3)UT2003, (4)and Jedi Night.

Games 1 & 3 are very graphics card limited whereas 2 & 4 scale very well even on midrange graphics cards. This means for games 2 & 4 a 9100 will be plenty fast, but your frame rates will be determined by largely by how fast your CPU is.

 

[clicknext]

The thing is that a 500mhz CPU doesn't even meet the minimum requirement of a lot of games now. With a Radeon9100 (same as 8500) it would probably run some slightly older games ok. Sorry to say this, but I bet you'd see more of an improvement going to a new CPU in a lot of cases. Maybe you can get some kind of 1ghz+ CPU that runs on your motherboard.