Hello all. Long story short, i have a cheap desktop and used to game on a laptop. I would run the Orange Box on medium settings with playable framerate(Desktop couldn't play games).

Today i went to the store and bought a GT430 (I know!) for my desktop, and wow im overall impressed to how much better my desktop runs Orange Box than my laptop.

Heres the question, when i go to the settings and all the current settings are with the * next to it, i assume thats what my gpu recommends. Thats everything on high with no AA. I get super smooth framerate (I game on ps3 :P) except there is some screen tear. However, out of curiosity i turned up everything on max, including AA on 8x. And to my astonishment, game maintained good framerate( +30 definitely) and there is less screen tear!(than the recommended settings)

So whats with that? will i fry my system?

Thanks in advance.

Extra info: Desktop is an Athlon 64 2.4GHz 2gb ddr ram single core(I know! :P)

Probably won't fry your system as the orange box isn't too much of a resource hog (quite the opposite actually). You've got to remember that the GPU in your desktop is quite a number of GPU generations newer than the hardware when Half-Life 2 was released. I imagine even episode 2 runs smoothly and in actual fact, the rest of your system probably bottlenecks your card.

Btw, if you want to get rid of screen tearing you need to turn V-sync on.

You can't really fry your system playing a game (even Crysis) as long as you have adequate cooling, adequate power and are not pushing the card past its limit (overclocking too much etc.) . If the card can't handle something, it simply won't, and you'll get skipping and slowdown. It won't generaly work itself to cinders.

Don't worry, game on!

Alright thanks guys i can game on max setting happy now :)
Scoobes! thanks man, i didn't know what v-sync was but it got rid of the screen tear!

OP's issue has already been solved however, I would like to ask, should I just wait for Radeon HD 7000 series instead of getting a 6970 card?

Btw, my brother has an Athlon 64 single-core at 2GHz with 2GB DDR2 RAM and he put a Radeon HD 4870 card in it. He's since purchased a new computer. We just keep it around as an extra StarCraft II box.  And no, you can't really fry your system with an OP graphics card in it. Just make sure it stays cool with some fans. You might also consider a new power supply, just in case.

I'd get the 6970. Who knows when TSMC will sort out their issues and we'll get 28nm. It seems like only Intel is free of manufacturing process troubles these dats.

Alright, thanks man.

Copy that sir!