Question Can a AMD athlon II X4 640 run games from the early to mid 2000s

[giga1023]

Basically all I want to do is play games from the early to mid 2000s, games like

Doom 3
F.E.A.R
Unreal Tournament 3
Far Cry 1
etc.

I wanted to know if a AMD Athlon II X4 640 could work because all I have is a motherboard with a max TDP of 95w
and it's a socket AM2+ motherboard

 

[cryoburner]

The higher clocks would definitely help too. There should be a notable performance difference between those processors, especially in games that can utilize more than one core. Considering it would probably cost less than the graphics upgrade, it might be the better one to start with.

One thing worth considering is that the cooler that your Athlon 170u is currently using might potentially not be capable of handling the heat output of an Athlon II X2 when under load. The 170u was a lower-end processor at the time it came out, and only has a 20 watt TDP, while an X2 240 has a 65 watt TDP. I don't actually know what cooler the 170u would have come with though, or if it was any different than the one that came with the X2.

Also, how much RAM does the system have?

 

[King_V]

In terms of GPU, I found the HD 6540 to be reasonable for playing games - I think I did it at 1024x768 on a CRT at first, then at 720p when I got a "modern" monitor. This was about 9 years ago, playing the original Borderlands game.

 

[giga1023]

I have 3gb of ddr2 ram

 

[giga1023]

I'm very sorry I keep on asking these types of questions but I just want to be sure about this so I'm not wasting my 14 dollars. Can a AMD Athlon II 170u 2ghz single core proccesser paired with a AMD Radeon HD 7570 1gb GDDR5 play older titles like quake 3 arena or far cry. Again, I'm so sorry I ask this question a lot I hope no one gets annoyed. P.s, my computer also has 3gb of ddr2 800mhz ram

 

[NightHawkRMX]

As many have said:
Yes, that setup can run early 2000s and earlier games. Any game up until 2006 or so should be fine as long as you have the correct OS.
Dos era games should run fine in DOSBOX.

Anything after 2006 is a maybe. Games like Mount and blade Warband should run, but maybe not Crysis or Skyrim.

 

[mitch074]

I'm very sorry I keep on asking these types of questions but I just want to be sure about this so I'm not wasting my 14 dollars. Can a AMD Athlon II 170u 2ghz single core proccesser paired with a AMD Radeon HD 7570 1gb GDDR5 play older titles like quake 3 arena or far cry. Again, I'm so sorry I ask this question a lot I hope no one gets annoyed. P.s, my computer also has 3gb of ddr2 800mhz ram

This is all rather balanced (on the "poor" side of things), and the Athlon II X4 wouldn't give you much of a boost in games. Anything after 2006 would be tough to run even on low settings.
Now, getting a X4 and a proper cooler like the Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 Plus (that you should be able to find for 10 bucks) will definitely cool that CPU down; and, for 20 bucks, you'd get a radeonhd 7770 2Gb. If your BIOS allows, replace some of your RAM with 2 x 2 Gb to reach 6Gb of RAM and you'll be able to run pretty much anything that doesn't require SSE4.x.
Tally : 15 (CPU) + 10 (HSF) + 4*4 (RAM) + 20 (GPU) : 61 bucks at worst.