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Radeon 9800 Pro playing TF2?

I was at a pot luck with my friend and I asked "Are you going to upgrade soon?" He built a computer when we were in high school (we graduated 2004), so it's definitely very old now. I believe he has a Pentium 4 2.8 and a Radeon 9800 Pro

His response was "I play TF2 fine on my 22" monitor"

My initial reaction was: WTF are you smoking? I can't play TF2 with my 7800GT and my Opteron dual core system... do you turn it down?

Him: Nope. It runs fine. I have a 9800 Pro.
Me: Yeah and I have a 7800GT. If it's slow for me, how can you run it.
Him: I have a 9800.
Me: Uhhh... 7800 > 9800. Only after going to Radeon 4850 could I play it smoothly.

I never understood this guy. Through our years he always plays the same games as we do but his system is clearly not capable of it. I know because with a similar or better system I'll get framerates unacceptable to me. Yet he plays.

I think some people just go into games not setting anything for the graphics at all. I remember playing GTA with him once and mine was choppy but his was blasting smooth. Then we went into his settings (and he already had the game for a month or so) and found out he was playing at 640x480 all along.

Sorry. Just ranting. It's like the people who watch SDTV on their HDTV without knowing there are HD channels... or letting their 4:3 SD channels stretch to 16:9 where everything's beyond distorted.
 
Maybe he upgraded to a 9800GT 😛

I used to play TF2 on an opteron 146 and a 7800gt. It wasn't pretty but it was playable.
 
It's a source game, it should run just fine on a 9800pro at low settings.

Don't really see what you're ranting about, some people don't care about graphics.
 
Different people have different standards... I remember I used to play CS:S and HL2 on my 9600XT with a A64 3000+. They ran decent at about medium settings... with an X850 XT in there it games better than my current laptop which is a Core2Duo/HD3450.

Personally I put up with my laptop because it's what I have and I don't feel like blowing hundreds of dollars so i can run my games at slightly higher settings... I can run the older source games at max settings and the newer ones like L4D and games like bioshock on bare minimum settings with some bad fps drops during action, although frustrating, its still much more fun than not playing the game at all.. lol
 
I stretch 4:3 to 16:9. Sure everything's a little stretched, but it's SD satellite tv, and I prefer to use the whole screen. I'm also used to it after doing it for years.
 
I rarely adjust Graphic settings, unless things are performing quite badly. Most games, that I play anyway, seem quite capable of Auto-Detecting reasonably.

That said, Acceptable Performance is certainly relative. I've played many games with crappy Frames and did well because I was able to adjust. After an Upgrade and the performance improved, playing the game on a crappier PC would leave me scratching my head as to how I ever managed it.
 
I don't see how that would play smoothly unless it was <16 people per server. I was playing with my Opty 165/x1800xt fine on small servers, but it would absolutely kill my CPU on >16 player servers. FPS in the high teens.

Maybe that's acceptable to some people though.
 
I don't see how that would play smoothly unless it was <16 people per server. I was playing with my Opty 165/x1800xt fine on small servers, but it would absolutely kill my CPU on >16 player servers. FPS in the high teens.

Maybe that's acceptable to some people though.

How does player count have anything to do with your CPU? I played fine with my old rig on 64 player servers.
 
I don't see how that would play smoothly unless it was <16 people per server. I was playing with my Opty 165/x1800xt fine on small servers, but it would absolutely kill my CPU on >16 player servers. FPS in the high teens.

Maybe that's acceptable to some people though.

Something was wrong with your setup then. An opteron 165 and an x1800xt was my old rig, and it never struggled with TF2 at 1920x1200 with all settings maxed (no AA though).
 
I had a system like that (slightly faster CPU, same GPU) in 2004 that I played HL2 games (HL2, CS-S, DoD-S) at 1280x1024 then 1680x1050.

Later I got a Opty 146 and 7800GT they were much better, even later Opty 165 and 7800 GT which I played lots of TF2. I don't see how the hell your dual core system with a 7800GT didn't play TF2 smoothly.
 
He's probably too used to low FPS to know any better. I thought playing CS 1.5 on a Pentium II was fine until I upgraded to a P4. When I tried playing on the P2 again, it looked really choppy.

Just different standards, I guess.
 
It's a source game, it should run just fine on a 9800pro at low settings.

Don't really see what you're ranting about, some people don't care about graphics.

Indeed. I have a friend who plays CoD4 on a worse system than that. Sure he has to turn everything down, but it's still just as fun though not as pretty.
 
Used to play TF2 and L4D on a C2D 1.6Ghz/Nvidia 8400M GS Laptop, on medium settings. It would chug maybe ~5&#37; of the time, but I'd have no problems playing in populated servers of up to 24 people.

Now, attempting to play Company of Heroes on that thing is another matter altogether . . ..
 
My brother played L4D on his 9800 Pro. He can play L4D2 as well but the reflections don't work.. for instance on the flooded levels the water looks all white.

Since TF2 is on the same engine I'd say it probably works.
 
i played HL2 and CSS on a 9800 (nonpro) and an xp1700. at like, mostly high settings.

TF2 is not much more demanding.
 
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