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The game has been out for several years at this point the final version with act 2 and 3 came out last year.

It's the sound blaster it's lacking for me. I had a few ideas how to get one in but not found a good USB one that works with XP yet! Must admit not looked that hard since the built in soundcard is pretty good (just lacks a few features) It's nice to hear other people doing similar things.

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop Model SB0730 is the one I got. The card is low profile, but the bracket was full height. So I just cut the bracket and bent it in correct place for low profile. I think EAX doesn't work in Vista and above, so you are definitely missing out on that if not running XP.

​@@AvenyetsTechWorkshopYou can get XP compatible USB Soundblaster X-Fi. I have one. I used it when creating a Windows XP virtual machine and it ran great. I am not sure if it has a model number.

@@RetroPcCupboardEAX is always the biggy. Then on board actually supports it but the implementation is poor. This build is stuck to USB only unless I can find a decent DTX board. But finding a good USB sound blaster with xp drivers for a good price had been difficult. Honestly I prefer the form factor and happy to loose a few features.

​@@RetroPcCupboardif you find out the model let me know. I've so far purchased 2 based on the info I have found one didn't work and the other only half worked (buggy drivers). I think I might revisit it over the long weekend. Thanks.

Thanks for the insight. Good to know. I currently have 2 machines I use almost daily one with a ge and one with a g (both with a gtx1650) and honestly never anything between them. But I've not pushed it to this level. I might have a play later and see what performance difference I can see

​@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop There must be some reason for AMD to produce those GE CPUs. I'm kind of interested in the difference between the GE unit and the G unit at 35W setting. unfortunately, my motherboard doesn't have those features. I purchased the GE unit only for my mini PC.

@@user-fl4ok8mb5t it used to be more important but the way modern CPUs handle the turbo speed they will generally just boost until they need to cool. The only real difference is the base clock which is the real 35W difference. So if you turned off the boost on both CPUs you would then see a difference. Though in this case the G uses about 45 watts it's only really the 4700G that would use 65 watt. Of course mobile processors are the expectation since they can be set to have a power limit. It's all rather confusing and the spec sheets don't help.

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop yeah, 8 core CPUs take more power that is reasonable. but I also have a few 5650GE chips, they use as much power as the 5700GE. 35~42 TDP, 58 watts.

This could be down to the good old silicon lottery. For example on passmark the 4300ge scores more than the standard g since they are most likely binned parts to hit that 35 watt. But this doesn't mean they all will. So it's perfectly feasible to have 8 core parts out there in the same family that can perform better per watt than the lower core version. Without a large sample size it's difficult to know for certain (overclockers UK for example charge a premium for better binned parts but they have enough stock to test). The TDP is only a guide and it's really just marketing at this point. Undervolting can also achieve some amazing results but that's another topic.

Honestly it depends on your budget. Any card will be suitable. It will bottleneck at high frame rates in very modern games (regardless or GPU uses) but at 60FPS it should not bottleneck. Budget friendly cards like a 3050, 3060 or 4060 would work fine but really the sky is the limit the CPU will work perfectly fine with a RTX 4090 Ti but it would bottleneck at 60fps+ (also there might be a bottleneck with PCI-e lanes).

The difference isn't that great. But if you can grab one cheap there is no harm. The difference will depend on the game

pairing it with GT630 Is best but without vcard it still cant high as 1920 res they said E7500 or E8400 is the best but i have now Q8300 still lag on Nba 2k14 & Farcry 3 cause AMD A6 6400 no longer need gpu its very smooth on old games @@AvenyetsTechWorkshop

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop If Q8300 lags on NBA 2k14 1440-1920 res & Farcry 3 even low ultra lag on without vcard i think it will be a small difference cause AMD A6 6400 no longer needed gpu for high settings

@@nescafecreamywhite7235 if you are getting a little bit of stutter then it can make a difference but I wouldn't expect more than 10% more frames.

Is I3-2120 on 1155 doesnt need GPU for old games can play high settings just like AMD A6 6400?@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop

It was my home lab for a while. Basically ran a load of VMs for software dev stuff. Great little machine. The only time I used it for gaming was emulation and lighter steam games. It's been a work horse most of its life.

Still used daily as my main machine. Currently has a gtx 1080ti and a 4750g in it with 32gb ram running Linux mint. Excellent board with zero issues.

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop Thank you for taking the time to respond, truly appreciated. I also just subcribed. 🙂

I've been on the look out for a nice fast agp card. A few about but a tad out my price range at the moment.

You can only overclock this cpu in the bios. For some reason this was never enabled in Ryzen master

Because I'm terrible with copy and paste. Sorry about that. This machine would struggle with the Witcher 3

​@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop it's okay. :)

The 6400 could be done but the card is not much better than the 1650. I possible 4050 seems feasible since the 4xxx series seems to be returning to the old tdp format. But we have possible "super" versions soon so don't hold your breath. The 75 watt class seems to be a bit of a no show of late I don't think the performance per watt has been good enough to replace it yet. But maybe next gen both camps have stuff in the mobile field that have potential.

Act 1 would be fine but act 2 and act 3 struggle CPU wise. It runs ok I've been playing it at 1440p with the 1080ti with 40-50fps

Yes that's correct it's 8C 16T.

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop Yeah I know but, it's weird how you managed to find a controversial image to begin with.

I was tempted with a heat sink mod due to the horrible fan noise at times. I settled for a replacement fan and a slight fan curve adjustment. I use it mainly as an emulation machine these days which works perfectly.

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop If you check r/intelnuc I posted what I did the other day. Assuming you enjoy projects like that, it was pretty fun. Wasn't really "necessary" for me either, I just can't leave shit alone lol. Side question.. Did you ever do anything with overclocking the igpu in the bios? With way more thermal overhead, my initial attempts @ OCing have actually made gaming performance worse.

It will run better than this. It should run in medium (might have to be below 1080p) this issue with this laptop was more the CPU than GPU. Since the steam deck can run you might be surprised.

I think you might be limited to 720p if you are after 60fps. for 30fps you should be able to handle it on medium. This game runs on the steamdeck so it should perform ok. The CPU might have some issues in some areas in Act 3 though. But expect the performance to be worse than whats in this video due to the lower specs and this video is 3 years old.

Works rather well on this kind of spec. The steam deck is the same spec so at 720p medium is very feasible.

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop does my hard drive has to be ssd?

It would help greatly but it's not required. There is a setting for slow HDD mode to allow the game to work better for HDDs.

I would not attempt it with this setup. While the gpu should be able to handle 720p on medium the CPU is going to cause issues. You need at least a 6xxx desktop quad core and a GT1030 or GTX1050.

This was patch 1 compared to release so 3 years difference. I can't get 4k but I can get 1440 without too much issues (few drops here and there). Turn off some post processing and use double buffering. Some of the settings absolutely tank performance. This seems to vary greatly between card generations and drivers.

I'm not 100% sure I have not been able to download the latest version yet. It runs in the steam deck well which is a very similar spec. So it should run at 720p. Remember if you buy it via steam you can always refund if it doesn't run.

It should be playable at 720p since it will run on the steam deck. Give it a few days to see where the current version performance has landed. I'm currently downloading it but I won't know for a few days (very slow internet)

Highly likely. This was the very first EA version. It has some strang performance issues. Later versions worked better though.

True. But there is a lack of monitors that support that natively so I generally snapped to laptop and common sizes of screens (whatever I had on hand). Good point though. Thanks for pointing it out.

​@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop However a pretty good card for what it is. I had a GT 710 before in my PC, which is so terrible, I wouldn't even call it a GPU. Since I'm limited by my PSU and it was too difficult for me to replace it, I replaced the GT 710 with a Zotac GT 1030, DDR5. I had some Indie 3D game that rarely hit the 20 FPS at 1024x768 with the 710, with the 1030 and the same settings I get ~60 FPS. Would even get some FPS more, if I try it again with my new 144hz screen.

@@uli.s it's a great card and with the steam deck being in the same class (some people say it's similar to a 1050 but that's just incorrect at the 720p range) we can expect it to run most games in the 720 region for a while yet. I will be playing this on the steam deck later this evening :D

Yes it can be upgraded to the i7 6700t. No other processor will work.

I have not got that CPU. But if you have a fan that pushes air down and over the board I can't see any issues with that CPU. If you are concerned you can grab some super cheap mini heat sinks and stick them on with thermal glue or pads.

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop Thanks for replying. I thought about getting heat sinks, however, Mike's unboxing on video "Adding Heatsinks To Motherboard VRM & Chokes Is It Worth It?" added to this exact motherboard and couldn't get much difference in it but I guess it wouldn't hurt to try anyway. It just got me worried before buying the CPU to know if this motherboard can handle it because, Tom's Hardware (Four Cheap Micro ATX B550 Motherboards Tested: Low Price, Big Value?) tested with a 3900X (105W) and it throttled.

@@rileybenson765 it shouldn't throttle the concern is generally a crash or blue screen. Most of the time the vrm cooling is just for show and don't provide much cooling. A bit of airflow is always enough.

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop great, thanks

Water cooler system. It's the mini zotac version with just a generic water block (no ram cooling) with 2 rads. It never went over 60 (max heat limit for the pumps)

@@AvenyetsTechWorkshop thanks for the reply appreciate it!

Should be fine the CPU is fast enough for most things other than modern gaming. Maxing the RAM should be pretty cheap as well.

You can still set PPT manually and undervolt / clock. It likely even has ECO mode.