How is this card?

[Alaeron]

I found on Amazon this card, new and dirt cheap (€33). I don't want a monster of a card, just something to play games that came out at most until a few years ago (up until Mass Effect 2's time mostly) on medium settings at least. Also because the rest of my system couldn't handle next-gen stuff. My system:

Windows XP Home
2 GB DDR2 RAM
Pentium 4 3.2 GHz

I've seen a few videos on Youtube of people playing Battlefield 3 and Mafia 2 on it pretty respectably (their systems were still better than mine but I don't care about games this recent as I said). So is it actually a step up from the X1950 PRO 512 MB I currently have? Would it work on my system? Is it too much?

[Crazyeyesreaper]

wouldnt bother upgrading that rig its not worth putting money into

the Pentium 4 is so slow by todays standards even typical Smartphones are faster at this point. and a 6450 will let you get away with all low in most games at very low resolutions.

As for Battlefield 3 you wont be playing it on your system your system doesnt even meet the minimum requirements even if it did Windows XP is NOT supported so the game wont install period.
So as you can see your system doesnt even meet the minimum, and it wont meet the minimum requirements of many other games, to be blunt you honestly need a new system.

as for the GPUs strength it varies from game to game but for the most part the x1950 should be faster than the 6450 the 6450 is so weak it doesnt really play games at all its ment for video playback and HTPCs etc

todays INTEGRATED GRAPHICS on the Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs and AMD Llano and Trinity APUs ends up far faster than the 6450. Simple put its performance is so weak, even the weakest of todays modern products can be up to 2x faster.

Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) 32-Bit
Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core (Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHZ or Althon X2 2.7 GHz)
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics Card (AMD): DirectX 10.1 compatible with 512 MB RAM (ATI RADEON 3000, 4000, 5000 OR 6000 series, with ATI RADEON 3870 or higher performance)
Graphics Card (NVIDIA): DirectX 10.0 compatible with 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 OR 500 series with NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT or higher performance)
Sound card: DirectX compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD ROM Drive

Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows 7 64-Bit
Processor: Quad-Core CPU
Memory: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics Card: DirectX 11 compatible with 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 or ATI RADEON 6950)
Sound Card: DirectX compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD ROM Drive

[Alaeron]

I'm not interested in games like Battlefield 3, I know my computer will never run them. My rationale was that maybe by changing video card may solve the issues that I have. That, and it's a dirt cheap one.

Say, how would Medieval II play on it?

[Crazyeyesreaper]

it will play, reasonable well but in all honesty your CPU is more the bottleneck in that situation aka soldiers on screen etc but it will work, just i can't see throwing money at a machine that was already out of date 6 years ago.

not trying to sound like an ass here but ive honestly found better working and far faster PCs at the local town dump

[Alaeron]

Eh you're right, this processor is awful. I'm better off with something new. It's already a miracle that this thing does what it does (like play Third Age on mostly high settings).

[paradamed]

Considering how old your rig sounds be sure to check if your mobo has a pci-e16x slot before buying any new graphics card.

[Bolkonsky]

I doubt that card will fit in your motherboard. There's not many 478 PCI-E x16 motherboards around.

[Alaeron]

If that's an indication of anything, the part you plug in looked exactly the same as that of my other cards. If they all look the same but are actually different, then who knows. Probably won't work. It says it requires a 400W PSU, mine is 305W max.

I can't find anything older or weaker than that on Amazon.