GPU Upgrade for Optiplex gx280

[Wahoosjw]

I was gifted a few Dell Optiplex 280s. The specs are:
2.8Ghz Intel Pentium 4
4 x 512 mb RAM
40 gb SATA hard drive
280 Watt PSU

I have purchased the following upgrades.
3.4 ghz Intel Pentium 4 with a 2 Mb cache
2 2 x 1 Gb RAM
Corsair 430 W PSU

I know the the Dell motherboard has one PCI-E x16 slot and was wondering what the best GPU is for the build I have planned (I plan on replacing the hard drive). I would like to be able to run some older games such as HL2 and TF2 on it. I was thinking about a 2 Gb EVGA gt 620, but am not sure if this will work in my build, or if there is a better video card more worth my money?

Thanks in Advance,
Wahoosjw

 

[burdenbound]

In my opinion you should scrap that build completely. The pentium 4 is crazy outdated and your performance is going to suffer because of it. I wouldn't sink any more money into it and just save up for a proper build.

Sorry that this does not answer your question but sometimes it's best to just cut your losses.

 

[Kescarte_DeJudica]

Hello,

The EVGA GT 620 is an excellent card for your build! For an older retro gaming PC like this one, just about any card with similar specs will do without two much of a performance dip. For example, I would probably use an AMD Radeon HD 7470, just because I have a spare one on hand.

Wish you the best on your build! And in case you aren't aware, not only can this build run just about any game on Windows XP all the way back to the Windows 3.1 era, but it also has official driver support for MS-DOS, in case you want to run older DOS games.

Hope that helps you, and anyone else who stumbles upon this thread in the future with a similar question.