Graphics solution for XP gaming

[aisle9]

I picked up an ancient HP dc5000 small form factor machine today on the dirt cheap ($5). Inside it is a Pentium 4 3.0GHz (socket 478). I dropped in 3GB of DDR and a GT 210 (512MB DDR3 PCI), and it performs about like you'd a system with that hardware to in XP gaming--beautifully.

 

The problem is that it's huge. It's basically a thin MicroATX tower on its side, and I didn't take that into account when purchasing it. I had been using an Optiplex 790 USFF (i5-2500S) as my XP gaming setup, and only bought the new system so I could add a GPU (the USFF doesn't have any expansion slots). Once realizing how freaking big the new machine was, I tried dropping in an i7-2600 for its faster iGPU clocks, but quickly learned that the cooling solution on the 790 USFF is no bueno for 95W CPUs.

 

So all that leads into the question: how close is Intel HD 2000 to the GeForce 210?

[Phentos]

A quick google search shows they are more or less the same in terms of overall performance. Both hot garbage for today's standards, but they are the about the same.

 

For old XP-era games, either one should work okay with reduced visual settings depending on the game.

[aisle9]

2 minutes ago, Phentos said:

A quick google search shows they are more or less the same in terms of overall performance. Both hot garbage, but they are the same.

 

For old XP-era games, either one should work okay with reduced visual settings depending on the game.

Hot garbage by today's standards, yes, but the GeForce 210 has consistently impressed me on older titles, especially for a PCI card. I think the DDR3 memory has a lot to do with that.

[Phentos]

2 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Hot garbage by today's standards, yes, but the GeForce 210 has consistently impressed me on older titles, especially for a PCI card. I think the DDR3 memory has a lot to do with that.

Yea I edited my previous post to mention that comparison. 

 

The 210 seems to pull ahead of the HD 2000 for games with more complex shaders and such. At least according to what I've come across. 

[aisle9]

3 minutes ago, Phentos said:

Yea I edited my previous post to mention that comparison. 

 

The 210 seems to pull ahead of the HD 2000 for games with more complex shaders and such. At least according to what I've come across. 

Yeah, I just popped the 2500S back into the 790 and put it back on my desk. I could get really nutty and go into BIOS with the i7-2600 to turn off hyperthreading and disable two cores, which would help get those crazy thermals under control, but that's a lot of work that I don't feel like doing now that I have the 2500S back in there. Even for the extra 250MHz on the HD 2000.

 

...dammit.