When I and my mate first got into pc gaming 13 years ago we didn't have any money to spend. He first built his pc with this one and I was astonished with the kind of extra gaming power you could get with a gt 210 over the igpu of a core 2. A year later I got a gt 610 and that blew me away.
Wait you are telling us, you guys bought two of these bottomfeeders? One can be declared as bad luck and no to little knowledge, two are just rightout ignorant and three are heavenly screaming naive. With the money the 210 and the 610 had cost, a 650 or even a 740 could have been obtained. All this in regards to prices from 2010 to 2015. A nice 1030 2GB GDDR5 card can be obtained at around 80 to 90$ used on amzn marketplace, other places may sell even lower. So acceptable performance doesn't have to cost a kidney, one should just not aim for the bottom, because then you buy twice or even thrice.
@@bloeckmoep You are not very bright, my boy :D This is a budget card from 2009, something like 1030 now a days. As you can see, it could run AAA title from that era (Fallout 3) with lowest settings. There were tons of games few years older that would be perfectly fine with 210.
I actually got this relatively recently - 2017, when I needed a single slot GPU for a 1U server rack that I got for really cheap, when I was building a work PC with practically 0 budget, when I left job and started freelancing. I got it for 10e or less. And it was pretty amazing against the builtin thing that was barely able to run Windows! I even played some light CS:GO on it. It lives on to this day, when I used it to fix older friend's computer in which the onboard GPU somehow died. Maybe it's shit, but it helped me to get my own shit sorted.
integrated graphics "dying" could indicate something (very) wrong with the motherboard. First thing I would keep an eye is for stuffed capacitors. And make sure the backups are up-to-date... :D
Big respect, i was gaming on a 8600gt, core duo, 2gb ram 2008 qosmio i paid 3k euros back then in 2021 for a few months as i resold a 3700x 2070 super etc to survive.. got me thru to play fallout 1, fo2, deux ex invisible war and red faction 1. Now rocking a 9900k, 2080ti xtrio, 32gb 3600mhz and 1tb m.2 970 evo plus etc that i paid 1850 euro with warranty second hand.
So I actually have one of these. I build PCs as a business, and managed to get one included when buying an old hardware bundle. It's actually EXTREMELY useful. Its great for running the desktop and non GPU demanding applications, such as cinebench and memtest etc - for ensuring bundles or CPUs/motherboards/ram are working perfectly fine. Its a situation I saw often but recently have been using more often as I often get in used components and find myself waiting on GPUs.
Honestly love your reviews of low end hardware. A lot of nostalgia for me, growing up always struggling to run games. Followed by that feeling of buying a somewhat decent gpu and being blown away by the modest improvements. Currently rocking a gt710, trying to recreate the past . keep up the Good work
yep, especially for if you're not sure whether the CPU/Mobo may have an issue, much better to risk killing one of these than a GPU that can game currently
these videos, really never disappoint, your contents makes someone with low-end gpu forgets the issues on gpu scarcity and just go on low-end gaming,. thanks o lot mate.
@@janwitkowsky8787 was it really? Because I had an 8400gs and it wasn't bad as a backup, untileventually replacingmy backup with a GTX750ti. Granted I didn't expect much from it and my systems I would've put it in had no iGPU.
This card was never meant to play games. It's market was to have either a better graphics than the on board Intel GMA, have dedicated video memory, and to just use to view spreadsheets with. Maybe a TH-cam video, but that's it. Its extremely low power consumption was also a factor for maybe a large business having 500 computers running, this would add up to saving energy costs annually. The fact that it somehow still runs games anyway is the weirdest bit.
This is exactly how I remember my old days playing on Intel HD graphics everything with low specs patch at 640x480 and still deeply bellow 30fps 😅 now Im rocking a 3080ti but I will never forger my roots
Oh god man, same. back then, i was on a laptop with an AMD Turion 64 x2 1.8ghz, 4gb ram, and its GeForce Go 6100. sub 30fps in everything almost except COD 2, half life 1, 2 and portal. Half life 1, 2 and COD 2 were the only games i could hit 30+fps at 480p / 800x600. Portal 1 had to run in Dx8 mode as Dx9 would tank my fps even at 480p. with Dx8, i could at least have the bandwidth for high textures instead of it all going to shaders. But deep inside, I kinda miss gaming like that. Things were just much simpler back then. But i do got an SFF PC that is close in performance, if not identical or just marginally faster with a Pentium 4, 2gb ram and a PCi version of the 6200.
@@FinnLovesFP My AMD Turion laptop only had 2gb of RAM, but it had the GeForce Go 6150! What a beast, am I right? Half-Life 2 had no right running as well as it did on these.
ah memories. My first GPU was a measly GeForce 2 MX 200 when I was 16 years old. It was still a huge upgrade from my terrible S3 ViRGE paired with a 550 MHz Athlon.
My first very "serious" graphics card was a PCI version of the Geforce2 MX. Before that I did have a "Diamond Monster 3D" Voodoo1 add-on card to go with my S3 Virge DX/GX. Man, those were the days... :))
My first "serious" graphics card was a 16MB Voodoo Banshee. I still have it in a box and am going to use it just like I did originally, in a Windows 98 machine.
I have a few of these lying around somewhere in the office. Many versions too. Some with DDR3, some with DDR2. All equally terrible. But the true "champion" is the Zotac 610 PCIe 1x. The only PCIe lane truly chokes the performance. But it was bought only to troubleshoot problems.
My old Pentium 4 machine got an upgrade with a 210 in 2010, I believe, mainly because it was the card I could afford. Finally I could play Fallout 3 and Oblivion with the glorious mods I've heard so much about.
That just about sums up what I thought it could do, what I found most interesting was the gta 4 vs 5 comparison, it's crazy that newer games can actually run better than older ones. Many people would think older games run better just cause they don't need as much optimization, which is true in a sense but newer hardware can also have better optimization, pretty cool, great video, also I literally do just use my 210 for a video output lol
gta 5 ran better because it utilizes the gpu better and the resolution scaling helped a lot as well.but if you had cpu bottleneck like i did back in the day gta 4s performance will win over 5
For really budget computers like the ones I still sell in my home country, adding this would double the integrated graphics capacity and add the hdmi port to a VGA-only mobo, so I understand the value of these decrepit GPUs
@@Fractal_blip Computers with Athlon 145 CPUs (single core) can run Windows 10 if provided with enough ram and (if financially possible) a SSD, at least for basic use (ofimatics, email and light TH-cam watching), so there is still a market for old rigs. Heck, even lower specced builds using Windows 7 are still usable, as long as you don't do financial transactions on them
Up until last year i was stuck with my old 210 as a replacement for a broken down graphics card. It was alright under normal use, without gaming and didn't draw much power.
There's been lots unopened AMD cards going around. Server grade cards that AMD's contracts ran out for. They had to contractually keep stock for repairs and replacements but those expired and all the cards were sold off. Now people are reselling them. Miyconst just did a video on this - R9 Nano workstation equivalent for 100€. Might be worth making a video on.
LOL… the GeForce 210! Technically it was Tesla 2.0, but it offered only ~10% of the performance of my GTX 285. The only reason it had shader cores at all, was to support Windows Vista’s (and later) DWM display compositor. Since all versions of Windows from Vista onwards require (for logo and full desktop functionality) a video card that supports some degree of 3d rendering support, as the graphics pipeline has applications render to private back-buffers and then those are composited (as render to shared surface) to 3d surfaces by DWM, you need a 3d capable card. Additionally, Vista, 7, 10 and 11 all use shaders for various alpha-blended DWM effects. The 210 is built to basically support that use case, and nothing else. It’s better than a GMA950, but not much else.
I bought this graphics card in 2010 for the Core 2 Duo that I found in the trash. That system had 6GB of RAM so you can imagine how limited I was in the games that I could play. That's why I'm very happy with the FX8320 that I got for free.
I keep a few 10s around for emergency video needs. the GT 210, 610, and 710 are perfect for diagnostic purposes. Need no PCI power leads, can fit in anything, gives video output for BIOS and Diagnostics.
Was using one of these as a daily driver in my x5670 Xeon office PC until literally last week. Powered a third monitor alongside a 7970 😋 Finally updated it to a Ryzen 2600 and 970 after about 13 years lmao.
I remeber this was my first grpahics card, a gift from a friend from Costa Rica. Before that I was using a 1st gen i3 iGPU. I remember being so hyped because CoD and LoL and such ran 30+ fps like it was something from another world
I bought this gpu back in the day to play some modern dx10 games, and even though it wasn't fast enough, it did ok for the most part. I played so many games on it. Edit: I played gta4 with medium settings 720p and i believe it was hitting around 20fps (i even have a video on youtube) my gpu was 1gb not 512mb.
Card was a budget option when it was released in 2009. As you can see, it would run AAA game like Fallout 3 from previous year on low settings. It could also run AAA games from 2004-2005 on medium or even high settings. Comparable to modern gt 1030, rx 550 , rx 460 or 560 ...
lol, that 210 and a core two duo got me through my first 2 years of gaming rise of the tomb raider,a fully modded skyrim, new vegas and fallout 3, witcher 2 i could typically squeeze 30 fps out of with dips in the teens but i made iit work, i learned how to fully potato a game on that setup
@@hemlocksalad5383 it was not as bad as it seemed back in 2007 it was the all i knew. It played most of the games i wanted it too, like hellgate london (medium low) roblox, halo ce, and a crap ton of flash games. At that time i just thought thats how pcs were. Most of my games were on console. Its not till i got my first bigher machine that my eyes were open.
It probably won't run well, I have a Nvidia NVS 3100M (gt 218m) in my old laptop and that runs fallout 3 with 60 - 80 FPS at 1280x720 low with some options turned up a little bit but that GPU can't run most PS2 games in pcsx2 and wind waker at 1x resolution in dolphin runs at 10 - 15FPS in a few spots, the only emulators that use the GPU and run well on it is project64 and PPSSPP
@@nathanmead140I wasnt really talking about this specific gpu, 210 is shit. No doubt about that. Urs a bit better, still not quite good. In ur old laptop of course. I meant something u know high end for the time it came out, how good is it now. Like gtx 460/560 is it still good, etc. only example. I dont knwo about many gpus that were released but id bet that there are some hidden gems that arent worth an arm and leg and still can get u decent perf. for the buck. And yes even older gpus can emulate shit decently, depends how decently what emulators are usable with it. Etc how well it runs shit. That sorta things. He might do even two videos, one for PC gaming and one for emulation. Broaden the horizon. Gaming for me is Gaming no matter the platform. So i think would be a nice content upgrade and might get some new ppl to subscribe. But its just a suggestion, if he wants it and have time and fun with it, he should do it. If hes ok with what hes producing so far, fine with me. I like hes videos, i was just suggesting to again broaden the view.
I bought an MSI Radeon 4650 passive back in the day with 512mb of DDR3... It was just as bad, possibly worse. I just used it for BF2 and BF1942, though. The VRAM is what really hurts these old cards.
I bought two 310's a couple years back. NOT for any other reason than to assist a vision impaired friend of mine in building a computer. I intentionally went ultra low end in all the parts purchasing, knowing his vision issues I wanted him to learn without thinking "OMG I destroyed a paycheck".
My office pc had this card! It wasn't very good, but it's nice to see it again. I never imagined it could run COD Black Ops or Fallout 3. It's great to have in a work pc because with HDMI, DVI, and VGA you could connect almost any monitor to it.
These are great for creating an ultimate combo DOS+98SE+XP retro gaming rig on a Pentium 4 HT. Would love to see you make the combo and run some retro games!
this only has drivers for Windows 2000 & XP for older operating systems. maybe an old nouveau driver module for an ancient build of the linux kernel for early debian if you're lucky.
More than twice as powerful as the graphics card I had when it first came out. Was still on AGP so really it's remarkable that it's ONLY more than twice as good as the card I had from 2003.
can you try testing out a decent potato graphics card with a fastest hdd/ssd drive (experiment because of HDD hog on Control) will the game improve peformance?
I once played gta4 on a laptop on its release that looked essentially how it looked in this video. It ran better at ingame night time and I actually beat the game with those low fps. Good times.
5:15 you could probably get 30fps out of GTA 5 if you did the "Budget Builds Hack" - which is to disable shaows in the INI file, set the default resolution to 640 x 480, then go back into the game and set resolution scale to 0.5. That then gives 240p with no shadows. I have an ATI HD3450 in a Core 2 Duo PC somewhere, I might repurpose that as a 240p gaming machine :).
only reason mine's in a drawer and not installed on my C2Q machine is because I also have a GT730; for some reason the one I have refuses to POST on modern machines so I also keep in that same drawer a 750ti for testing purposes, both are legends of their respective eras
I have a few of the GT 210, lol. I use them for either just installing an OS, or as a known working card to test with a system that's having suspected GPU issues
The 210 isn't terrible if you are using it for games that it is capable for. If you want to build an old box for some really old games, maybe a retro XP PC, and use a Soundblaster for EAX. Of course I use a Radeon HD 8760 (the same as a HD 7770) and a Phenom X6 1100T in my XP build. Way overkill! That is why its named 'HOLYSHIT' in reference to Unreal Tournament 2004 (I think). It says that when you put all graphics settings to max.
Actually while worse than most Quadro NVS chips, the GT 210 was really designed for media center applications, in another words 2D only. But with a huge advantage over intel graphics at the time.. HDMI and multiple out. Not that you would really want to use this card for such capabilities, but the inclusion of an HDMI port being really the star of the show as most motherboards at that time didn't offer them outside of mobile (if you had been lucky). You could probably do 1080p with this card just fine but I imagine that 720p was more realistic. Interestingly Apple shipped a similar card for their Mac Pro line but with mini display ports. It was the lowest end option and probably a worse card then what it replaced in the late '08 Mac pro.
This is my first graphics card, I was like 10 years old back then and already amazed about how my gaming experience (I was mainly playing BFBC2 at the time) changed. It literally resurrected my HP Pavilion. "Terrible" is a bit rough tho :( I think something is weird if not totally biased, I used to play Black Ops 1 just fine with it, coupled with a Pentium and 4gb ram in 1024*768 and random settings
I bought one of these for very cheap and it is wonderful if you build PCs, don't have internal graphics, and simply need a card to test your components with before you build.
GT 210 can still do OK in super old games, it's an OK solution to people like me who want to play on more era approriate hardware but don't want to buy a big chunky hot GPU from '03, instead, a tiny card from 6 years later gives a decent alternative when it comes to performance and API support.
Amen. And the motion clarity... By the way if you want one do it now, it will soon be too late. Crt gaming is on the rise and none will be left for free/cheap in a few years. I have multiple and they're awesome :) From retrogaming to cyberpunk 2077... it looks really good.
@@drigondii Haaa shit. Don't use search terms like "crt". Sort by lowest price and use things like "pc monitor" "old computer" "screen". Then scroll. Hope that helps, good luck.
I want to see you get an old AMD x1650 pro's performance- that was my very first GPU. I played Crysis between 15-30 fps with it, but that was somehow okay back then. I even made my own custom heatsink that worked well but look janky as heck! I'd be interested to see how it performs today!
Found one this in a junk throw away PC. Kept it as a display out card just Incase. But my lord worst thing I have ever touched. Once GPU hell freezes I'll be getting a proper backup GPU. Nice video shocked it ran anything any resolution.
My old Asus UL50vt laptop has a Geforce GT210M paired with an Intel C2D SU7300 CPU. It was not exactly a very good laptop for gaming in 2010, but it has a long battery (6 - 8 hours), so it was a perfect student laptop.
I use a a GT210 and it works totally fine. I should add, that it is on duty in my fileserver and solely used as a display adapter for configuration which can't be done via RTS. Needed since the xeon has no iGPU. That is the usecase for such a card.
A friend of mine swiped this card from an old pc when we were in highschool, it felt so powerful and could run far cry 2 compared to integrated graphics from my q6600..
This thing exist only to make GT 710 look like a beast.
And the 1030
(5700G leaves the chat)
I was thinking "pretty sure my 210 is more powerfull than that" then remembered I used it in a media HTPC & have a 710 in my old tower 😂😂
It used to be ideal for HTPC builds because the interal GPU’s back then sucked even more
Nope. You think GT610
When I and my mate first got into pc gaming 13 years ago we didn't have any money to spend. He first built his pc with this one and I was astonished with the kind of extra gaming power you could get with a gt 210 over the igpu of a core 2. A year later I got a gt 610 and that blew me away.
Goes to show just how bad gma is
Wait you are telling us, you guys bought two of these bottomfeeders? One can be declared as bad luck and no to little knowledge, two are just rightout ignorant and three are heavenly screaming naive. With the money the 210 and the 610 had cost, a 650 or even a 740 could have been obtained. All this in regards to prices from 2010 to 2015. A nice 1030 2GB GDDR5 card can be obtained at around 80 to 90$ used on amzn marketplace, other places may sell even lower. So acceptable performance doesn't have to cost a kidney, one should just not aim for the bottom, because then you buy twice or even thrice.
@@bloeckmoep You are not very bright, my boy :D This is a budget card from 2009, something like 1030 now a days. As you can see, it could run AAA title from that era (Fallout 3) with lowest settings. There were tons of games few years older that would be perfectly fine with 210.
It’s not even called GT210 I think it’s called G210(no T)
@@bloeckmoep nigga please
The idea of putting Geforce 210's in SLI is hilarious.
Make it an gt 420 lol
For maximum productivity! You could run 6 monitors
@@spider69420true
@@TaiLungDW- Then you could really blaze it!
@@spider69420 - Legitimate surround setup.
I actually got this relatively recently - 2017, when I needed a single slot GPU for a 1U server rack that I got for really cheap, when I was building a work PC with practically 0 budget, when I left job and started freelancing. I got it for 10e or less. And it was pretty amazing against the builtin thing that was barely able to run Windows! I even played some light CS:GO on it. It lives on to this day, when I used it to fix older friend's computer in which the onboard GPU somehow died. Maybe it's shit, but it helped me to get my own shit sorted.
That's the best kind of sh*t
integrated graphics "dying" could indicate something (very) wrong with the motherboard. First thing I would keep an eye is for stuffed capacitors. And make sure the backups are up-to-date... :D
Big respect, i was gaming on a 8600gt, core duo, 2gb ram 2008 qosmio i paid 3k euros back then in 2021 for a few months as i resold a 3700x 2070 super etc to survive.. got me thru to play fallout 1, fo2, deux ex invisible war and red faction 1. Now rocking a 9900k, 2080ti xtrio, 32gb 3600mhz and 1tb m.2 970 evo plus etc that i paid 1850 euro with warranty second hand.
Kamil ... yeah, it's shit.
@@unitybeing777 Well, you sure have come up in the world. Congrats to yourself, Mate ...
I could actually handcrank frames out of my PC faster than that lol.
One of the funniest fucking comments I’ve seen all month
Looks so weird to see a card as slow as this advertised in this way on the box
It is a good GPU for MMORPG
Should have seen the advertising on my old ATI MSI 4650 passive card lol
So I actually have one of these. I build PCs as a business, and managed to get one included when buying an old hardware bundle. It's actually EXTREMELY useful. Its great for running the desktop and non GPU demanding applications, such as cinebench and memtest etc - for ensuring bundles or CPUs/motherboards/ram are working perfectly fine. Its a situation I saw often but recently have been using more often as I often get in used components and find myself waiting on GPUs.
Honestly love your reviews of low end hardware. A lot of nostalgia for me, growing up always struggling to run games. Followed by that feeling of buying a somewhat decent gpu and being blown away by the modest improvements.
Currently rocking a gt710, trying to recreate the past .
keep up the Good work
These old cards are handy for system testing a pc that has a cpu that lacks an iGPU .
yep, especially for if you're not sure whether the CPU/Mobo may have an issue, much better to risk killing one of these than a GPU that can game currently
i just love looking at low res gameplay. keep up the good work
"I should have left it in the box."
Thought you'd be covering the 6500 XT based on that quote.
@@JohnSmith-XYZ Decent for E-Sport games...
@@JohnSmith-XYZ It's slower than 5 year old cards that cost the same MSRP when they came out.
these videos, really never disappoint, your contents makes someone with low-end gpu forgets the issues on gpu scarcity and just go on low-end gaming,. thanks o lot mate.
This was the only new card I could afford back in the day. So I went ahead and bought a used GeForce 8600 for half the price.👍
Good deal.
'Cause the GT 210 is based on the Gefroce 8400 GS. xD
What model of the 8600? Im asking couse i had a 8600 gts from xfx it was the extreem oc edition but i bought mine brand new.
@@candidosilva7755 Just a DELL OEM 8600GT. Was miles ahead of my old 6600.
@@candidosilva7755 I owned a pair of XFX 8600GT Fatality cards that I run in SLI held up pretty well back in the day...
@@janwitkowsky8787 was it really? Because I had an 8400gs and it wasn't bad as a backup, untileventually replacingmy backup with a GTX750ti. Granted I didn't expect much from it and my systems I would've put it in had no iGPU.
A couple months ago at my local microcenter, they probably had almost 100 of these brand new on their shelves
Do you remember the price?
@@gamamew Can't remember unfortunately, not sure I ever even saw a price on them
@@questisland3111 Normaly you can take our german prices in roughly 1:1 ratio and depending on them it should be rougly between 40-50$.
@@mariokuppers5686 whoa, they sell at the price that should be the msrp of the 1650
This card was never meant to play games. It's market was to have either a better graphics than the on board Intel GMA, have dedicated video memory, and to just use to view spreadsheets with.
Maybe a TH-cam video, but that's it. Its extremely low power consumption was also a factor for maybe a large business having 500 computers running, this would add up to saving energy costs annually.
The fact that it somehow still runs games anyway is the weirdest bit.
No shit? He did say that in the video.. But that doesn't stop this mad lad from testing it out! Cause it wouldn't be RandomGaminginHD if he didn't 😂
@@danimayb it is kind of surprising just how well business cards do in gaming if your expectations are low enough.
I'm still rocking this monster! As a 3rd display output.
Awesome! Glad to hear it lives on!
@@RandomGaminginHD I still have it too, just not in use.
@@AchiragChiragg
Mine is king of the hill in the AGP card box upstairs.
Impressed the card ran anything at all.
This is exactly how I remember my old days playing on Intel HD graphics everything with low specs patch at 640x480 and still deeply bellow 30fps 😅 now Im rocking a 3080ti but I will never forger my roots
Oh god man, same. back then, i was on a laptop with an AMD Turion 64 x2 1.8ghz, 4gb ram, and its GeForce Go 6100. sub 30fps in everything almost except COD 2, half life 1, 2 and portal. Half life 1, 2 and COD 2 were the only games i could hit 30+fps at 480p / 800x600. Portal 1 had to run in Dx8 mode as Dx9 would tank my fps even at 480p. with Dx8, i could at least have the bandwidth for high textures instead of it all going to shaders. But deep inside, I kinda miss gaming like that. Things were just much simpler back then. But i do got an SFF PC that is close in performance, if not identical or just marginally faster with a Pentium 4, 2gb ram and a PCi version of the 6200.
@@FinnLovesFP My AMD Turion laptop only had 2gb of RAM, but it had the GeForce Go 6150! What a beast, am I right? Half-Life 2 had no right running as well as it did on these.
I literally own this card still lmao. I pulled it out of one of my random junk boxes early today and I find it hilarious that you post this today.
man, I thought you were gonna test Lost in Vivo on this graphics card.
I'm not disappointed btw, your benchmark videos are really great.
Graceful Serenity and good ending soundtrack. I was listening to them just this day. What a beautiful game.
@@LSK2K same here but the framerate is really bad and unoptimized game, it's almost like Crysis but Silent Hill with terrible optimizations.
@@therealfuranku224 my advice is to try the cracked version. Worked better than the steam version for me. Really smooth.
ah memories. My first GPU was a measly GeForce 2 MX 200 when I was 16 years old. It was still a huge upgrade from my terrible S3 ViRGE paired with a 550 MHz Athlon.
My first very "serious" graphics card was a PCI version of the Geforce2 MX.
Before that I did have a "Diamond Monster 3D" Voodoo1 add-on card to go with my S3 Virge DX/GX.
Man, those were the days... :))
Yeah I remember the Geforce 2 MX, I played Thief: The Dark Project with this card. :)
I started with the S3 Savage4, then ATI Rage128, then GeForce2 MX and then Voodoo5. Bought them in that order, not necessarily from worse to better.
My first "serious" graphics card was a 16MB Voodoo Banshee. I still have it in a box and am going to use it just like I did originally, in a Windows 98 machine.
I have a few of these lying around somewhere in the office. Many versions too. Some with DDR3, some with DDR2. All equally terrible. But the true "champion" is the Zotac 610 PCIe 1x. The only PCIe lane truly chokes the performance. But it was bought only to troubleshoot problems.
This is a certified hood classic GPU
Ah yes I had it from 2011 to 2019. Played csgo , tf2, rocket league and a loads of different games on it. Can confirm its a beast.
The fact that the box says "do not return to the store" cracks me up every time, for some reason.
The 1GB GT220 is where it's at, pity the one I had from an old HD prebuilt ended up causing hardware issues with other PCs that I was tinkering with
My old Pentium 4 machine got an upgrade with a 210 in 2010, I believe, mainly because it was the card I could afford. Finally I could play Fallout 3 and Oblivion with the glorious mods I've heard so much about.
That just about sums up what I thought it could do, what I found most interesting was the gta 4 vs 5 comparison, it's crazy that newer games can actually run better than older ones. Many people would think older games run better just cause they don't need as much optimization, which is true in a sense but newer hardware can also have better optimization, pretty cool, great video, also I literally do just use my 210 for a video output lol
gta 5 ran better because it utilizes the gpu better and the resolution scaling helped a lot as well.but if you had cpu bottleneck like i did back in the day gta 4s performance will win over 5
GTA 4 is terribly optimized
You have to appreciate his outdoor unboxings
Of course it was never opened. They knew how bad it was.
It looks like some kind of PSone filter you can add to your games. Just needs a few warping textures.
Fun video.
That green PCB itself is a dead giveaway that this card ain't gonna handle any 3D games that well xD
I bought one of these purely to add HDMI to an old HP workstation. For 12 bucks it was only alil bit more expensive then a converter.
For really budget computers like the ones I still sell in my home country, adding this would double the integrated graphics capacity and add the hdmi port to a VGA-only mobo, so I understand the value of these decrepit GPUs
@@elfedorausado a sad reality but at least these things get to do a job
@@Fractal_blip Computers with Athlon 145 CPUs (single core) can run Windows 10 if provided with enough ram and (if financially possible) a SSD, at least for basic use (ofimatics, email and light TH-cam watching), so there is still a market for old rigs. Heck, even lower specced builds using Windows 7 are still usable, as long as you don't do financial transactions on them
Companies used to add them to PCs to add dual monitor support on older OEM systems that only supported VGA output.
Up until last year i was stuck with my old 210 as a replacement for a broken down graphics card. It was alright under normal use, without gaming and didn't draw much power.
Not surprising seeing how that's probably the card's intended use.
This card truly makes Fallout 3 look desolate.
There's been lots unopened AMD cards going around. Server grade cards that AMD's contracts ran out for. They had to contractually keep stock for repairs and replacements but those expired and all the cards were sold off. Now people are reselling them. Miyconst just did a video on this - R9 Nano workstation equivalent for 100€. Might be worth making a video on.
Drop a link please !
@@Phynix72 You can't post links on TH-cam. You can look up Miyconst or Wstore (Slovak website).
There were actually selling these brand new at Canada Computers recently. And they actually kept selling out, Crazy
LOL… the GeForce 210! Technically it was Tesla 2.0, but it offered only ~10% of the performance of my GTX 285. The only reason it had shader cores at all, was to support Windows Vista’s (and later) DWM display compositor. Since all versions of Windows from Vista onwards require (for logo and full desktop functionality) a video card that supports some degree of 3d rendering support, as the graphics pipeline has applications render to private back-buffers and then those are composited (as render to shared surface) to 3d surfaces by DWM, you need a 3d capable card. Additionally, Vista, 7, 10 and 11 all use shaders for various alpha-blended DWM effects. The 210 is built to basically support that use case, and nothing else. It’s better than a GMA950, but not much else.
I like the little warning when you open the box that tells you not to send this back to the store if it malfunctions but to EVGA directly
I bought this graphics card in 2010 for the Core 2 Duo that I found in the trash. That system had 6GB of RAM so you can imagine how limited I was in the games that I could play. That's why I'm very happy with the FX8320 that I got for free.
I keep a few 10s around for emergency video needs. the GT 210, 610, and 710 are perfect for diagnostic purposes. Need no PCI power leads, can fit in anything, gives video output for BIOS and Diagnostics.
Hardcore overclockers building up their testbench and swanky motherboard
The GT210 stashed in the bottom drawer: My time has come
Was using one of these as a daily driver in my x5670 Xeon office PC until literally last week. Powered a third monitor alongside a 7970 😋
Finally updated it to a Ryzen 2600 and 970 after about 13 years lmao.
I remeber this was my first grpahics card, a gift from a friend from Costa Rica. Before that I was using a 1st gen i3 iGPU. I remember being so hyped because CoD and LoL and such ran 30+ fps like it was something from another world
no snow in the UK or an older video?
It's bad to think, that this card is actually an upgrade, over my arrandale on-board gfx. Time for a new machine, I think.
Ah, yes not much you can do except faster memory in dual channel... Though best bet is any dgpu
my RX580 died like 2 months ago and now I'm using a GT220. It works for me though, I don't play games anymore so it does its job well enough for me.
I bought this gpu back in the day to play some modern dx10 games, and even though it wasn't fast enough, it did ok for the most part. I played so many games on it.
Edit: I played gta4 with medium settings 720p and i believe it was hitting around 20fps (i even have a video on youtube) my gpu was 1gb not 512mb.
Card was a budget option when it was released in 2009. As you can see, it would run AAA game like Fallout 3 from previous year on low settings. It could also run AAA games from 2004-2005 on medium or even high settings. Comparable to modern gt 1030, rx 550 , rx 460 or 560 ...
2:19 - Missed opportunity to insert a picture of Sean Connery for a second.
lol, that 210 and a core two duo got me through my first 2 years of gaming rise of the tomb raider,a fully modded skyrim, new vegas and fallout 3, witcher 2 i could typically squeeze 30 fps out of with dips in the teens but i made iit work, i learned how to fully potato a game on that setup
The box design still looks better than some others today
I still have my first graphocs card. An 8400 gs 256mb edition. It still works and i keep it as a reminder.
Great. I had gt 210 1gb back in the day, i wish i should have kept it.
8400 gs must've been dreadful. my first card was a gt 710 and I still keep it as a reminder to lol.
@@hemlocksalad5383 it was not as bad as it seemed back in 2007 it was the all i knew. It played most of the games i wanted it too, like hellgate london (medium low) roblox, halo ce, and a crap ton of flash games. At that time i just thought thats how pcs were. Most of my games were on console. Its not till i got my first bigher machine that my eyes were open.
Zamnnn, this was my first GPU, remember having a great time on this gpu(actually bad time)
id love to see how these old gpus are good for emulation, cause most newer ish games wont run good anyway, but for some low end emulation might be ok
It probably won't run well, I have a Nvidia NVS 3100M (gt 218m) in my old laptop and that runs fallout 3 with 60 - 80 FPS at 1280x720 low with some options turned up a little bit but that GPU can't run most PS2 games in pcsx2 and wind waker at 1x resolution in dolphin runs at 10 - 15FPS in a few spots, the only emulators that use the GPU and run well on it is project64 and PPSSPP
@@nathanmead140I wasnt really talking about this specific gpu, 210 is shit. No doubt about that. Urs a bit better, still not quite good. In ur old laptop of course. I meant something u know high end for the time it came out, how good is it now. Like gtx 460/560 is it still good, etc. only example. I dont knwo about many gpus that were released but id bet that there are some hidden gems that arent worth an arm and leg and still can get u decent perf. for the buck. And yes even older gpus can emulate shit decently, depends how decently what emulators are usable with it. Etc how well it runs shit. That sorta things. He might do even two videos, one for PC gaming and one for emulation. Broaden the horizon. Gaming for me is Gaming no matter the platform. So i think would be a nice content upgrade and might get some new ppl to subscribe. But its just a suggestion, if he wants it and have time and fun with it, he should do it. If hes ok with what hes producing so far, fine with me. I like hes videos, i was just suggesting to again broaden the view.
Definitely MUCH faster than GMA graphics! Sad you got such a barebones card, I think there were much cooler looking passive 210 (or was this the 710?)
I bought an MSI Radeon 4650 passive back in the day with 512mb of DDR3... It was just as bad, possibly worse. I just used it for BF2 and BF1942, though. The VRAM is what really hurts these old cards.
I bought one of these at a flea market for one dollar. It can kind of run Quake 3 (OpenArena), but I don't remember what resolution I was playing at.
This thing makes a 320m look like a monster
I bought two 310's a couple years back. NOT for any other reason than to assist a vision impaired friend of mine in building a computer. I intentionally went ultra low end in all the parts purchasing, knowing his vision issues I wanted him to learn without thinking "OMG I destroyed a paycheck".
My office pc had this card! It wasn't very good, but it's nice to see it again. I never imagined it could run COD Black Ops or Fallout 3. It's great to have in a work pc because with HDMI, DVI, and VGA you could connect almost any monitor to it.
I happen to own a brand new GT 710 from GALAX. Apart from maybe needing its thermal pads replaced, it still works great.
These are great for creating an ultimate combo DOS+98SE+XP retro gaming rig on a Pentium 4 HT. Would love to see you make the combo and run some retro games!
this only has drivers for Windows 2000 & XP for older operating systems. maybe an old nouveau driver module for an ancient build of the linux kernel for early debian if you're lucky.
More than twice as powerful as the graphics card I had when it first came out. Was still on AGP so really it's remarkable that it's ONLY more than twice as good as the card I had from 2003.
can you try testing out a decent potato graphics card with a fastest hdd/ssd drive (experiment because of HDD hog on Control) will the game improve peformance?
no
Did u try to OC it?
I once played gta4 on a laptop on its release that looked essentially how it looked in this video. It ran better at ingame night time and I actually beat the game with those low fps. Good times.
Just curious
What's the CSM mode good for (for this card and in general)
Is there an AMD equivalent to that SLI tool?
Oh jeez. I have two of these in the Store i work at...
5:15 you could probably get 30fps out of GTA 5 if you did the "Budget Builds Hack" - which is to disable shaows in the INI file, set the default resolution to 640 x 480, then go back into the game and set resolution scale to 0.5. That then gives 240p with no shadows.
I have an ATI HD3450 in a Core 2 Duo PC somewhere, I might repurpose that as a 240p gaming machine :).
only reason mine's in a drawer and not installed on my C2Q machine is because I also have a GT730; for some reason the one I have refuses to POST on modern machines so I also keep in that same drawer a 750ti for testing purposes, both are legends of their respective eras
I have a few of the GT 210, lol. I use them for either just installing an OS, or as a known working card to test with a system that's having suspected GPU issues
What a timely video. I found one in the ewaste last week
4:47 A lie detector test ? 😆👍
The 210 isn't terrible if you are using it for games that it is capable for. If you want to build an old box for some really old games, maybe a retro XP PC, and use a Soundblaster for EAX. Of course I use a Radeon HD 8760 (the same as a HD 7770) and a Phenom X6 1100T in my XP build. Way overkill! That is why its named 'HOLYSHIT' in reference to Unreal Tournament 2004 (I think). It says that when you put all graphics settings to max.
I saw an entire shelf of these at the microcenter last black friday
This one actually was my 1st ever graphics card. I remember it struggled to maintain smooth 60fps even with Half Life and GTA:VC
Actually while worse than most Quadro NVS chips, the GT 210 was really designed for media center applications, in another words 2D only. But with a huge advantage over intel graphics at the time.. HDMI and multiple out. Not that you would really want to use this card for such capabilities, but the inclusion of an HDMI port being really the star of the show as most motherboards at that time didn't offer them outside of mobile (if you had been lucky). You could probably do 1080p with this card just fine but I imagine that 720p was more realistic. Interestingly Apple shipped a similar card for their Mac Pro line but with mini display ports. It was the lowest end option and probably a worse card then what it replaced in the late '08 Mac pro.
This is my first graphics card, I was like 10 years old back then and already amazed about how my gaming experience (I was mainly playing BFBC2 at the time) changed. It literally resurrected my HP Pavilion.
"Terrible" is a bit rough tho :( I think something is weird if not totally biased, I used to play Black Ops 1 just fine with it, coupled with a Pentium and 4gb ram in 1024*768 and random settings
I bought one of these for very cheap and it is wonderful if you build PCs, don't have internal graphics, and simply need a card to test your components with before you build.
There is a use case for this GPU in 2022: it allows you to connect 2 VGA-only monitors (it has a D-SUB and a DVI-I)
GT 210 can still do OK in super old games, it's an OK solution to people like me who want to play on more era approriate hardware but don't want to buy a big chunky hot GPU from '03, instead, a tiny card from 6 years later gives a decent alternative when it comes to performance and API support.
Anything half decent card from 2004 and later is faster than this
I miss CRT monitors. Going low res like that didn’t make everything look so blocky
Amen. And the motion clarity... By the way if you want one do it now, it will soon be too late. Crt gaming is on the rise and none will be left for free/cheap in a few years. I have multiple and they're awesome :) From retrogaming to cyberpunk 2077... it looks really good.
@@Kaelidoz I’ve been looking for one in my area for a while now, and every time I find a listing, it’s already gone
@@drigondii Haaa shit. Don't use search terms like "crt". Sort by lowest price and use things like "pc monitor" "old computer" "screen". Then scroll. Hope that helps, good luck.
I want to see you get an old AMD x1650 pro's performance- that was my very first GPU. I played Crysis between 15-30 fps with it, but that was somehow okay back then. I even made my own custom heatsink that worked well but look janky as heck! I'd be interested to see how it performs today!
i like these old school gpu reviews
Found one this in a junk throw away PC. Kept it as a display out card just Incase. But my lord worst thing I have ever touched. Once GPU hell freezes I'll be getting a proper backup GPU. Nice video shocked it ran anything any resolution.
My old Asus UL50vt laptop has a Geforce GT210M paired with an Intel C2D SU7300 CPU. It was not exactly a very good laptop for gaming in 2010, but it has a long battery (6 - 8 hours), so it was a perfect student laptop.
Black Ops running on a Geforce 210 on lowest settings looks like the Wii version
I've beaten GTA IV, COD MW 1 and 2, COD BO1, Resident Evil 4 and 5, Mafia 2, with this cute little card.
The chicken!... 😆>3:11
Did it still have that fresh out of the factory smell?
I bought a GT210 about 4 years ago for my old XP machine to play old games - speaking of 2004 and older. Totally fine for that.
Works with Geforce Now though right?
I use a a GT210 and it works totally fine. I should add, that it is on duty in my fileserver and solely used as a display adapter for configuration which can't be done via RTS. Needed since the xeon has no iGPU. That is the usecase for such a card.
Is this in the tier below "potato"?
A friend of mine swiped this card from an old pc when we were in highschool, it felt so powerful and could run far cry 2 compared to integrated graphics from my q6600..
I have one of those in my "inventory". It's the MSI version with a fan on it. It wasn't even good enough to run Batocera with. Complete garbage.