Following up from my HD 3870 video — this time I picked up an untested HD 3850 from 2007 for $9.90. Cleaned it, repasted it and threw it at 6 games on a Core 2 Duo rig.
• GTA San Andreas
• CoD4 Modern Warfare
• Tomb Raider Underworld
• Just Cause 2
• NFS Most Wanted
• Crysis
Temps hit 106°C but it survived.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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At that rate, you'd be better buying one of those minipc's and game on it instead.
t. I have a orange pi 5 max and I'm quite sure I can run most (if not all) games you've mentioned.
Pressing x to doubt on the orange pi 5 - box86 ain't that good, yet, surely? :)
PS: OP appears to have a VERY old rig - perhaps they can't (or don't want to) upgrade to mini-pc?
FWIW, I can run all of the games demonstrated on my Lenovo M93p tiny at good speeds (and that only takes about fifty watts of power / cost $50-70 USD)
Haha the old rig is intentional — it's a retro build for testing old GPUs. That's kind of the whole point of the channel!
Yes, I figured as much :)
Nowadays it's all about FEX -- they've done some significant changes thanks to valve. Including reducing all the "chit-chat" between layers, making the game be as "native-like" as possible. Also, what you've said/implied seems to be the case regarding OP's rig -- no comment on that.