7970M & old games?

After reading somewhere about someone struggling to play Diablo II with a 7970M, I was wondering if that is likely to be a general rule of thumb with old games.

After several years of soldiering on with a machine which wasn't even mid-range at the time of getting it, I'm actually wanting to play stuff like Rome Total War, Medieval Total War 2, Age Of Empires 3, Civilization 3 & 4, among other older games over the past decade that I've never been able to run properly / at all before, as well as some that I have been able to run and would rather that I wouldn't suddenly be unable to on a new machine.

I've no interest in BF3, Skyrim, Batman, Diablo 3, etc. or any of the latest titles which seem to be very popular among the gaming laptop fans, although there are some new games that I do like, such as Civilization 5 and Shogan Total War 2. Alas, I didn't know that it might be a case of having to choose between being able to play old or new games!

When selecting my GPU, do I really have to commit and choose between A) Old games or B) New games & future proofing?

Might I be better off getting something like a GTX 660M, or might even that be "too good" for older games?

 

A 650 will play any game you want old or new, probably for a while.

 

If you aren't interested in new games then don't buy the 7970M. There is way to much power in that card for old games. Buy mid-range card such as Nvidia 650M.

 

get the 7970. when the 650M is not capable anymore you'll need to buy a whole new notebook. if you get the 7970 then it will last you much more time and you'll save money.
alternatively wait for a thunderbolt egpu.

 

Where did you hear that one?

 

if you want to play total war series with some mods, you are going to need that 7970m

Its amazing shogun 2 with high textures mods and some other things in massive 30-40-50k men battles

medieval 2 would look amazing, but it has some problems with gpus that have more than 1gb of ram, there are workarounds

I can already see you playing Third Age Total War in those customs maps, with everyting maxed, and with huge troop settings

 

The 7970M is overkill for even modern games. If you want to generally play older games, you could easily get by with a cheaper card. If you find you want to play really graphics-intensive games later, you can always upgrade then (and the 7970 will probably be a lot cheaper!)

 

Overkill for modern titles? What are you smoking? More importantly, where can I get some?

 

This thread............................................. wat

- the 7970M is neither overkill, or bad at elder games

 

I with Meaker where can I get some

Sent From My Rooted EVO 3D

 

First of all, love the choice of games, been playing a lot of total war myself.

Second of all, I would highly recommend the 7970m as it gives you performance/price like no other, which lets you max out all of the old games, my mate has one and we can play everything maxed/high res/mods, etc.

Third of all, this GPU will allow you to play any games you want on the market right now, albeit not completely maxed out but is the biggest step in gpus on a laptop for a few years now, definitely worth the investment.