GeForce Ti4200

A customer gave me his old MSI 128MB Ti4200 today when I upgraded him to a 6600GT.

I did some research and found that it is a DirectX 8 card... Does this mean that there is no way to play a game that requires DirectX 9?

My dad wants to play Sid Meier's Pirates, and it requires DirectX 9(b, I believe). I want to give him this card if he can play that game. Is there any hope of this? I will post the system requirements and his system specs:

Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
Pentium 1.0 GHz or higher
256 MB RAM
1.2 GB Free
4X Speed CD-ROM drive
32 MB video card with Hardware T&L support device should be compatible with DirectX version 9.0b or higher.
Windows 98/Me/2000/XP-compatible sound card (device should be compatible with DirectX version 9.0b or higher.)
DirectX version 9.0b (included) or higher

His system specs:

1.8 GHz Intel Celeron
512 MB PC2100 RAM
MSI GeForce Ti4200 128MB
Windows XP

I hope it's not true that his integrated video can play it but this video card can't-- that'd be a shame.

 

That game does not require a DirectX 9 card. It may have some DX9 stuff in it, but it's not required.

 

Does that mean that this card can be used to play the game?

 

You need DirectX 9c installed (software) but your card doesn't need to support DX9 instructions. So basically: yes, you can play it.

I like 4200's, they are very nice and very overclockable cards, perform well

 

This game doesn't seem too demanding as far as graphics power. How well will this card play other games?

 

It plays UT2004 great on medium detail, San Andreas perfectly fine, HL2 great, Doom3 not particularly well... its a great performing card considering!

Do make sure you do some tweaking with it though, out of the box its not a miracle Also I don't know about the MSI one but my Creative one was badly cooled, I don't think it could be much worse so I don't think cooling is an issue.

 

What tweaking do you recommend? I have never OCed anything before.

The customer upgraded his card because he said the Ti4200 (he called it his "crappy video card," he had no clue what it was) wouldn't play Battlefield 2.