Tiny 2006 rig running Far Cry 3 on Ultra @10-20FPS?!

[hawkiee552]

Yeah. With some modifications (PCI-E 16x cable extender), I managed to get my HP DC7700SFF working with a MSI GeForce 8600 GTS 256Mb card, and the performance on this thing is awesome.

First, this is a Small Form Factor PC, meaning that it is not larger than the first generation PS3 (more or less). Second, this PC is from 2006, and it's not the most spec-heavy version you could get. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 @2,13GHz, which is quite weak in the series of Core 2 Duos.

Enough talking, here's the video. It does contain explicit content such as bad language as this is a gameplay video, so you're warned:



Sorry for the 4:3 ratio, I had it running in 800x600 otherwise the framerate would drop down to 7FPS in 720p.

I played a while with these settings, and after I got used to the lag, it got playable, but I prefer low settings with high FPS.

[Soul]

How does it run on medium? What was the aa at?

[hawkiee552]

On medium it goes up to 30FPS, might drop down to 20 at the most (explosions and lots of particles and effects at the same time while in a deep jungle) and the AA was set to off because it doesn't make a difference in jagged lines (IMO) and it's hugging performance even more than just turning the resolution up.

[hawkiee552]

Just ordered a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 650 1GB and I'll test this rig with it. External PSU is needed though, but luckily I had a spare 300W PSU that I could use. I didn't buy the GTX 650 just for this rig though, I'm saving for an i3-3220 upgrade kit which will utilize every single GPU power of this card, but it'll be fun to see how efficient the E6400 is with this card running. I hope I'll get about 25-30FPS on ultra, as it seems to be this capable.

Can't wait for it to arrive!

[hawkiee552]

Forgot to update, but the card arrived on monday. Been testing lots of games, and I'm impressed!

Here's the average FPS for some games that I've been testing:

Far Cry 3 on Ultra (DX11 instead of DX 9 as in the video and 1440x900): 20-30FPS!

Battlefield 3 on Ultra: 30-60FPS

Dead Island on High (max): 60+FPS

Euro Truck Simulator 2 on Ultra: 30-45FPS

Far Cry 2 on Ultra High: 30-70+FPS

Need for Speed Most Wanted 2013 on High (max): 25-30FPS

GTA IV on Very High: 15-30FPS, on High/Medium: 30-40FPS

CS:GO on Very High: 30FPS

Garry's Mod on Very High: 60+FPS (finally I can play TTT without screenlag!!)

I can say that the card is totally worth the money, and that I'm good to go for now with this rig, I don't need anything more powerful.