Can a Nvidia Geforce 8500GT run SNES, N64, & PS1 Emulators?

turn_alive

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Nov 3, 2017
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Pretty much the question above. The reason why I ask is cause I'm planning on turning an old Dell Optiplex GX620 with a Pentium D & 2GB of Ram into a media center computer for the living room for streaming Netflix, Youtube & playing old NES to PS1 games via emulators on the TV. Also playing older light-weight games as well.

Our family still uses an old school CRT TV & I don't think where gonna be upgrading anytime soon(Budget reasons).

I'm looking for a graphics card with a S-Video port on it so I can run it into the TV, but with enough graphical power to run up to PS1 emulators with ease & older games like GTA SA, Sims 2, & Rise of Nations at 800x600 to 1024x768 at decent frame rates(Like around 30fps or more).

Also something that's really cheap too(As I don't have a big budget).

I was debating between the:

Nvidia Geforce 8400GS,
Nvidia Geforce 8500GT,
& the Nvidia Geforce 8600GT.

This Dell computer has a 305W PSU, which is plenty but I feel that Pentium D is gonna suck up alot of power & I wanna stay on the safe side of things. So I'm debating between these 3 cards. Especially the 8500GT as I feel it would probably be the sweet-spot between power consumption & performance out of those 3 cards.

Would a Nvidia Geforce 8500GT be good enough for all the task I described above, & if there are any better low-powered graphics cards with a S-Video port that is able to do what I describe above, can you suggest it? Any suggestions & advice welcomed!!!

Please no rude or unrelated answers.
 
Seeing as NES games really do not require that much power to run you should not have a problem with roms/emulators. A mobile graphics card might have slight issues with frame skipping, however if you can lock it at 30 frames you shouldn't see any issues.

Now the PS1 emulator is going to give you some problems especially with a mobile graphics card. PS1 and PS2 games require a beefy pc to actually run the games fluidly due to unstable emulators and roms. With some tweaking on the emulator you may be able to get somewhere with it.

You should go with the 8600GT, it will provide a good output and should dish out decent frames for all your emulation needs.

Heres everything you need to know about running the PSX1 emulator:
http://ccm.net/faq/4188-epsx-emulator-running-ps-games-on-your-pc

Here are some benchmarks for the card compared to other cards in that range:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=64&cmp%5B%5D=1270&cmp%5B%5D=1266
 


Will the 8600GT do well with the 305W PSU in the tower?