Can my 7200 run these games?

- Oblivion
- FEAR
- Half-life 2: Episode Two
- Neverwinter Nights
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
- Battlefield 2
- Starcraft 2

I tested my configuration with the System Requirements website, and in general the Nvidia Geforce Go 7200 graphics card was the weak point. However, the tests only took the 64MB of discrete memory into account, not the 700MB+ of shared memory. Can my graphics card run these games (I am confident of HL2 and Neverwinter Nights)?

PS; my dxdiag output:
Chip type: GeForce Go 7200
Total Memory: 825 MB
Dedicated Memory: 64 MB
Shared Memory: 767 MB
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.6904 (169.04)

 

On low settings you'll eke by.

 

On what graphics settings and performance though? I know that the games will run, but what I want to know is how well.

 

I played FEAR, SC:CT and HL2 on my old lappy on the lowest settings which was a Radeon 9600 with 64mb dedicated and no shared, so you should be able to get by on mid to low settings for those. (Also 768mb and an Athlon 64 3000+. Your rig trumps that so you'll definitely be fine.)

You should probably do alright at 1024x768 resolution and medium visuals all around. In HL2: Episode 2 you should be fine at medium for most of it except when the action gets heavy with lots of enemies at once, then you'll get slowdown. I had it slow to a crawl on a Geforece 6800 256mb at the Strider bits occasionally.

Also, as I understand it shared graphics with ram doesnt really do much for you as it cant fill that much memory anyways and the ram bus is too slow to keep up even if it could. You'd be much better off reducing shared to a total of 256mb and putting the rest back into regular ram duty. That extra 500mb you're sharing is just being lost. Even my 256mb dedicated won't get filled unless playing something like Bioshock or newer.

 

I'm pretty sure that my fps will drop in HL2 Ep2 due to the outdoor scenes. I'm OK with that as I run Ep1 at 40fps+. If FEAR can run at medium then that's worth buying. Would it run at 30fps or so? What about the other games?

 

Not having played them I couldnt say, but if they're the same generation with similar requirements you should be fine.

 

Fear will not run at medium. On my old Go7400 I ran at 800x600 low-mid to achieve playable frame rates (about 40+ to allow for dips).

It's pretty much the same story for every game there, low-ish settings, low resolution, with the exception of Ep2, which should run moderately better.

No idea about NWN or, obviously, Starcraft 2

 

Thanks for the responses. Do you guys know of any similar games that will run at high-max settings?

 

FarCry? Maybe? It's an very low-end card, can't ask too much of it.

 

what he said

 

I can run the following games:
- HL2
- HL2: Episode One
- Age of Empires 3
- Sniper Elite
- Empire Earth 2 (it's old I know)

at maximum settings with AA off (where applicable). True, the 7200 Go isn't a top-of-the-line card, but surely there are more playable titles other than Far Cry. You guys can do better than that!

 

Halo? FPS's tend to be the most demanding on the GPU, plus Valve's HL2 was just an amazing piece of coding and optimization, so good luck.