I'm a casual first-person gamer and on a tight budget. I just wanna play Half Life 2 without buying those fancy and expensive videocards.
 
I remember from previous reviews (years ago) that although FX5200s have poor showing in playing latest games at the time (when Half Life2 was launched), I'm nevertheless interested just to get on with it.
 
My question is, will FX5200 do the job? Doesn't matter if it plays at lowest fps or res.  
 
My specs:
P4 2ghz
Asrock P4i45GV (integrated sound & video)
Maxtor 40gb 72krpm
256 mb RAM DDR266
XP Home (no SP1 updates)
Creative 5.1 speakers
AOC 17" CRT flat

probably. but not very good.
 
you do need to upgrade whenever possiable though.

An FX5200 should be able to play the game if you turn down the graphic settings and play at low resolution. You should also be concerned with the RAM too, because with only 256MB, it'll be using the hard drives for virtual memory quite a bit.

i have an fx5500, and its good, but if u are buiying a new video card, id probably get a 7300 gt with ddr3, cause that would own half life 2 awesomely

your first question raises another very important question...
 
have you ever played HL2 on an 'okay' system?
 
... the minimum eh?
 
usually isn't the best idea... just skip going out for lunch for a week... add that money to the pile and get something a little bigger... a little better
 
you will be much happier and hey you might even shed a couple lbs.
 
 

I have an fx5200 and i strongly suggest you dont use it unless you only care about the HL2 story. With today's graphics you can get a much better card for under 100. fx5200 was the baseline graphics 3 generations ago (if you count 8800gtx as current gen). Finding a 6 series card is easy and i went from a 5900ultra to a 6800 xt on another rig and found a HUGE increase in performance for $110

[edit] misunderstood quote, my apologies... [/edit]
 
The 5200 will strruggle with HL2, It's the weak GPU that is the problem. It will probably be able to handle 800x600 with reduced details, maybe even 1024x768 with super low detail, assuming a decent CPU in the system.
 
256mb of system RAM is horribly underequipped for Half Life, as people have said you should have 512mb system ram minimum, 1 gb would be even better.

I would recommend at least 512MB of RAM and a Geforce 6600.

yes. i have a dell  
celeron 2.4
2x256ram
fx5200 128mb in pci
 
it plays call of duty 2 great even with a.a.x2  
the smoke even looks good. in dx7.0 or 8.0 though
 
it played halflife good not sure about hl2 though.

What's your spending budget? If it's around a hundred bucks, I'd say go for an extra 256MB ram, and get a Radeon X1300XT. It's a great low-end card that should be able to handle Half-Life 2, and it costs around $75.

 
Kind of like what I have (The X1300 but mine has 512MB's lol I know its too much ram but it sounded like fun !)  
 
I have to say for a cheap card it does play HL2 realy well and Episode One too !

 
 8O  
 
Im suprised XP Home runs on 256MB of ram, nevermind HL2.

If you want to play HL2 only, get an ATI card. HL2 was designed on and basically for ATI, Nvidia's framrates for the money compared to it are much much lower unless you buy like a 7950 GX2 or an 8800. Like they said, X1300.

 
 8O  
 
Im suprised XP Home runs on 256MB of ram, nevermind HL2.
 
I think you can run it with 128MB's (its been a while since I have been in class and thats one of those things you dont see much in this day of 1 and 2GB's machines lol)
 
Always surprises me on how little RAM you need untill you get into games or some other multi media aplications !

With all the suggestions you guy's have...I think I better start skipping lunch and dinner money to be able to buy a decent card after all. If you see no post from me the coming weeks...pls pray for me!

well, I have similar system specs. P4 2.5, 512 RAM and a FX 5200. In my experiance, it doesnt play well. I have to lower the res and settings to get *acceptable* play levels. So, technically, yes you can play Half Life 2, but dont expect any eye candy unless you like slideshows...

For me, I dislike my bfg 7800 agp card for hl2dm.  I lag on the big maps  As far as I am concerned agp is dead, any mobo w/out pcie, I don't want it.
 
hl2dm ftw!!
 
3200 xp
2gig of ram
7800 bfg gc

 
Why are you not running SP2? Without even having SP1 on you are no longer recieving security updates from MS, and within 5 mins of being connected to the net without a firewall that machine is going to be so full of trojans and viruses it will be running at the speed of a 486.

i'd recommend getting a 9550. i have one, i got it for free, but they run like $30-40 bucks. i love it b/c i got it for free, but its really not a bad card. i get pretty nice frames with everything turned up, no aa or af. so i'm really really happy, especially for the price. heh. but, yeah, if you have the money, definately buy higher. definately. with good 7 series and 6 series cards being sub-or close to $100, just save up.

 
I'll attest to the 9550 cards, not much difference in frame rate than a 7800 gs, missing hdr though