Can Intel GMA950 run older games on high quality?

I want to buy a laptop with intel gma 950, and i saw a lot of threads about it in this section, but most of you want to play HL2 or Doom III or GTA:SA. My question is: can i play Counter Strike 1.5 or 1.6, Unreal Tournament (the first, not 2003 or 2004) on this machine: Core2Duo 1,73GHz, 1Gb RAM, Intel GMA 950?
I know that this isn't a game center, so i don't want to play the newest games, but there are no informations about these older games, e.g.: fps, effects, res , etc. Pls tell me ur experiences...

(Sorry for my bad english, I'm working on improving it... )

 

Like all on low settings

 

I can run those games well enough to play. If you want an integrated GPU, do yourself a favor and find a laptop with a X3100 integrated card, its much better.

 

It can run on medium settings too you know.

 

Thanx, and what about the avarage fps? Can I reach 60-70?

 

the 950 can run wow well with low settings, ut 04 will do good at med, its not demanding at all. counterstrike will run fine med-low.

 

Well, which games are you talking about?

For counter strike 1.5 or 1.6 with 60-70 FPS, is a no, that won't happen. sorry.

 

Ohh. I'm not a gamer, this laptop will help me in learning, and i'll do some work with it, but i thought i can play these almost 10 year old games with good quality... (i wanted to play CS1.5 basically, i saw a test wich said that Q3 can reach over 100fps...)

 

either way, i would go for a notebook with the X3100, a bunch of notebooks have them and they are really cheap.

 

OK. I can't reach 60 fps with CS1.5 so i have to play card games...

 

Well, the only game I can really vouch for on a GMA 950 is Command and Conquer 3. It runs fine on medium settings. I was happy when I played it on that laptop...until it broke. Then I got to play on the 8600M GT on Ultra High and I was extremely happy...then my brother took it away....and now....yeah...I got nothin

 

As expected a lot of rubbish on this thread...

UT 99 runs fine on high settings, CS 1.6 runs fine on high settings.

I don't know why people felt they had to mention WoW and UT2K4, he didn't mention those games at all....or where people got the information to state that it will only run CS 1.6 - an engine about 8 years old - on low settings?

 

Well said havok. I think people just like to bash GMA950.

 

GMA 950 can run BF1942 high settings

 

Whats the big deal with 60FPS anyways? Even if it did 45FPS, that would be fast enough.

Yes CS 1.6 will run, same with UT99.

Played those on my Pentium II 400 with a 8MB ATI Rage 3D card years back, so I'd hope the GMA950 is "slightly" faster.....

GMA950 will play a lot of older games - WarCraft III, Civilization, Age Of Empires etc.

 

I guess as soon as people say CS or UT they assume it's Source or UT2004. I can't see how the GMA 950 can't run the original CS or UT99 well. Those are both DX6 based games which means they do not even require hardware T&L. That actually means you don't need a GPU (ie. DX7+) in the modern sense, because the CPU is actually doing most of the work so it's irrelevent whether the GMA 950 doesn't have vertex shaders or T&L support.

 

well if he wanted to know if it could play ut good, wouldn't it be useful to know that a later, more demanding game can be played with it also?

 

it will run ut 99 pretty much perfectly on the standard maps on max. I used to use one for ut 99 and the only time my frame rate dropped was on the custom huge sniper maps which are many many times larger and more complex then the standard maps.

if you can get a low end dedicated card then by all means try to, but if you cant you're generaly stuck with older games, but those run fine and can be just as fun.

 

From personal experience... You can run Doom 3 on LOWEST selling and LOWEST resolution, and the game runs quite smoothly. You can run GTA Vice City very smoothly. You can run GTA:SA, but the frame rates are in 10's. You can run Guild Wars, every game by Blizzard (including World of Warcraft) very well. You can also run Rome: Total War on medium setting with unit scale set to small. You can run Fable: The Lost Chapters on lowest setting. I could run UT 2004 on my desktop with GMA very smoothly on low/medium setting.
Here's the bottom line: if the game REQUIRES shader support, don't expect toooo much. Your card can't handle games that require shader even if it supports it. Games that have shader as optional (like Rome Total War) are fine.

In other words, don't get the GMA. There're plenty of computers with 7400 or 1400 being sold. If you HAVE to get a GMA card, get 3100.

 

integrated is something you never want to come near, they suck and youll be stuck with them, which is worse

 

Thank you for these infos.
I really like these old games, I played almost 2 years with UT99, and there are a lot of fun sevrers and hundreds of players playing this game on the net nowadays. And CS1.5 also has a big community, even in hungary (there are 10-12 clans, and 5-6 fast, public servers), so i think i'll be satisfied with this laptop, and fortunately, i won't play the newest games all day instead of learning on the university

 

Eleg jol irsz Angolul. Az en Magyarom sokal roszabb ahoz kepest. =)

 

Thanx mate

I'll buy the notebook in a couple of weeks, i'll try out all of these old games and submit test results to help others who want to use gma950 for gaming.

 

Already done

 

could you play half life 2 or halo 2( i mean on the GMA 950)?¿

 

Half Life 2 on lowest settings, not exactly beautiful looking but possible. Halo 2, no...

 

Very great thread, but i can't see CS 1.5, 1.6 or UT99. I mentioned these games, and i mentioned that i will post the test results of these games.

 

I didn't think it was worth the bother of posting them, as they run flawlessly on high settings, they are ancient games - I already tested them out. But I didn't think screenshots of 8 years old games would serve any real purpose when reviewing performance of any modern video, integrated or not.......

 

nthpeter, if you live in Hungary and going to university, playing on laptops would be the LAST thing I would do. Some of the most Beautiful women in the world in Hungary. Put the laptop down mate and well you know the rest... Cheers!
SXO792

 

Even with my wife's Acer laptop with Radeon Xpress 1100 I can run most games pre 2005 decently, and pre 2003 quite well, as long as you're using Windows XP. (AMD Turion 64 2.2GHz, 2GB DDR2, Radeon Xpress 1100 @ 256MB)

I tried Far Cry and Half-Life 2 in Vista, and it gave me nothing but serious issues. I reformatted and installed XP and it runs like a charm. I also was able to run BF2 at 800x600 with minimum settings at greater than 15fps in general.

Either way, the comment on shader support is key, and don't even consider Aniso or AA.

 

I don't know if CS1.6 is vastly different from 1.5. but I can assure you CS1.5 will run playably on GMA950 at medium setting at least.

My Reason being: I run CS1.5 at medium setting on my ATI X200M at around 30 fps (from 21 fps ~ 36 fps, depending on the map and condition). I read a benchmark somewhere, the GMA950 is better than X200M, _slightly_.

so yeah it will run. and why 60fps? may be it's me, but my eyes can't tell the difference once the fps goes above 30. :S

 

I bought an ASUS laptop with intel gma 950, and i can play with CS on high settings. I can also play with NBA live 08 on medium settings, Most Wanted on very low settings. I will post more games after i tested them.

 

You're right