A £30/$35 GPU....14 Years Later?

Hello and Welcome to another Budget Builds Official video where today we'll be taking a look at the Radeon X300SE, a GPU that was released in late 2004, and has managed to hang on to life for the last 14 Years. But how does it fare today in 2018, is it worth buying today, and what exactly made this little card so great.
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Specs: CPU: AMD R5 1600
RAM: 16GB DDR4 2666Mhz
GPU: Radeon X300 SE (64MB+64MB)
Tested on XP and Windows 10

[@mushroom-madness1]

I love how he explains it like whether or not you should buy it for your main system

[@pptemplar5840]

tbf, how else would he explain it. I mean most people would never buy it or even consider it, but if you're wondering "is this thing I dug up from my closet any good" or "can I use this part from a mildly dubious Ebay OEM" who else is gonna tell it tell you like this? Certainly more entertaining than benchmarking it pretending like it's still 2004 and not even considering the possibility of dumping it in a modern build, there's probably still reviews from 18-20 years ago on the internet to let you know "2004 gpu plays 2004 game mildly ok", talking about it in the context of a modern build is at least possibly more useful than the results of a google search.

[@thealterlion7163]

Imagine a 30 pound gpu sold today could have decent performance on the years titles and on 2019-2020 titles. Graphics have come a long way

[@oliverandersson1991]

www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-ryzen-3-2200g-vega-graphics-am4-cpu-w-wraith-stealth-cooler-cp-3ab-am.html CPU + GPU that actually can game in 720p at low/medium in the newest titles, its not 30 pounds but a comparable CPU without a GPU is around 60 pounds :p kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJKXYqKcbKdjZtE

[@thealterlion7163]

Oliver Andersson yeah, that’s pretty neat, but it’s integrated. I was referring to a dedicated card. The cheapest I can see new in my country is a gt710 for 45 bucks.

[@televisionandcheese]

The R7 250 is much much better than the GT 710, although slightly more expensive. It outperforms the 2200G, and can be found in most countries !

[@thealterlion7163]

television and cheese I couldn’t find an r7 250 on my local store, only an r7 240 for 75~ dollars. An RX550 costs 150~ dollars If you want check the page out pcfactory.cl , componentes partes y piezas is the place for pc parts

[@11matt555]

+The Alterlion I think its important to remember inflation. 30 pounds in 2004 is the same as 45 pounds today, which converts to $58 USD.

[@suryaiyer13]

It's quite rare to find someone who loves a command and conquer game. Good taste there mate :D

[@pierregrobbelaar9116]

Generals was specially good with the reborn mod and one of my fav multi player games but for some reason doesn't want to work on newer hardware.

[@bzlu9311]

I still play generals to this day, never seems to get old :)

[@slawor4]

@@pierregrobbelaar9116 the origin version runs on Windows 10, and can personally confirm that it runs on Ryzen CPUs and Maxwell and Pascal GPUs

[@nothlur]

@@pierregrobbelaar9116 Idk if you're still wondering about this but just in case anyone else is wanting to get it working on modern systems, there's a thing called GenTool that makes it work properly, adds quality of life features (widescreen, 60FPS IIRC), and i think adds some multiplayer features for competitive play. basically what Project Cartographer is for Halo 2 Vista, but for C&C Generals + Zero Hour.

[@redaffix7320]

Still miss westwood

[@MirelRC]

Your videos are so relaxing.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Cheers man

[@Seawolf.Gaming]

Try talking to him, it's even more relaxing.

[@Wahid_on_youtobe]

True

[@BIOHAZARD_V2]

I KNEW I RECOGNIZED THE KOTOR MUSIC!!!!!! nice choice :)

[@gabrielwhite3890]

You're like the default skin on Fortnite for names.

[@BIOHAZARD_V2]

What tipped you off Sherlock?

[@gabrielwhite3890]

@@BIOHAZARD_V2 I was at the gay bar but it wasn't happy.

[@kittersmccat8847]

You just got shouted out by 2kliksphillip

[@spork8655]

Four pixel shaders. Four.

[@SoftBreadSoft]

Who could ever need more than four shader cores

[@TridonsEve]

And two vertex shaders! 6 total! That's more than I can count on one hand. The one card. The best card.

[@01RIE01]

Interesting little card. Amazed by the performance in semi-modern games too! With future old graphics card reviews, could you add old NFS titles like IV: High Stakes, Porsche Unleashed and II: SE?

[@SummonerArthur]

I agree, but just one of these on each video mano, se não fica muito nfs num vídeo só...

[@DiabloXL69]

These games are pretty old tho, even the most potato GPU of the mid2000s could run em at 60fps

[@computercatgaming02]

I Love these old mid/low range cards those are really fun to play around with. ❤️

[@heroscout2485]

Nice video but I have to clarify that CnC Generals only hits 60 fps in multiplayer games or with gamespeed 60, the framerate equals the gamespeed in skirmish matches. I bet you would get the same results in 1280x720 and 1366x768 using GenTool as resolution changer. Keep up the great work :)

[@CarlosSMOfficial]

Keep in mind the X300 SE was basically an X300 with the memory bus cut in half (64 bit vs 128 bit on the X300), also X300-600 were mostly rebrands with native PCI-e of the older 9600 series: 9600 = X300 9600 SE = X300 SE 9600 PRO = X600 PRO 9600 XT =X600 XT X550 is basically a X600 PRO with underclocked memory on the 128 bit version, or a overclocked X300 SE on the 64 bit version

[@TechoGames]

Hamish Please never stop making videos you're probably one of the best youtubers out there keep it up man

[@TenTenzo]

I was just looking for a video to watch, this channel never disappoints :)

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Cheers man.

[@harryspapadopoulos8818]

I can't wait for the GT 1030 video in 2027 when that card will be 10 years old.

[@SiggyPony]

I collect X series ATI cards :) X300 type is one I don't have yet. Right now I have X1600 type cards including X1650XT (cool unique card) and X800, and 1900 cards

[@Czllvm]

Legend has it if you’re quick Budget build will heart your comment

[@Seawolf.Gaming]

So can it play crysis at 16k 2842fps?

[@jaxecxll2802]

Yep

[@Peter-iw3ob]

With ray tracing too

[@silverhawk7324]

more like 16K 2842ypf (Years per frame)

[@nistauglavi7855]

Ryaken frames per year**

[@ineedaname1341]

@@silverhawk7324 lol i just spat out my drink laughing

[@djpirtu2]

C&C Generals! We still play Zero Hour at LAN parties. We have so called "zoom patch" which allows to zoom out a lot more from the playfield.

[@somemore9784]

The x300se was my first ever graphics card in a machine with a 3ghz Pentium 4 and 256mb Ram.

[@somemore9784]

Me too

[@zuyvox]

bare in mind that nobody had a FullHD oder 4K Display back then. I have a couple of old PCs and all of them are running with 17" or 19" TFT Displays. Then, with a resolution of 1024x768 you can run a lot of games that wouldnt even start in FHD.

[@frank144p4]

Will you eventually study and benchmark every card ever? 🤔

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

yes

[@frank144p4]

That would be awesome, love the channel by the way. “Pot” computer ftw

[@Abitous]

Damn this big boy was my first graphics card I ever had, I got it from my dad after he got a new computer (just saying)

[@pablonaranjo]

I had this on my Gateway Intel P4 550, 1GB RAM, 250gb HDD And The Radeon x300 it played Half Life 2 Great

[@Mini-z1994]

ATI Tray Tool might let you overclock older graphics card like this or rivatuner.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

It will do, but wont work nicely with Windows 10.

[@virhao6961]

old version of rivatuner work

[@nunyabusiness4651]

I had a 9700 pro and a 19in trinitron monitor and remember playing Half life 2 when it was new.. that card was a beast compared to the geforce cards of the time..

[@TheVanillatech]

Those flat screen Trinitrons were nice monitors. Good clarity (0.23 dot pitch on some models) and very nice refresh rates. I had a 21" model which could be hooked up to two PC's at the same time, with a switch on the side of the monitor to flick between the two. Very handy in those days. ATI were dominating around the time of the 9700, and they knew it. Nvidia had nothing for GeforceFX, they were rushed to the table with their DX9 cards, but ATI failed to take advantage of their lead and released too many mid range cards, ending some of their lineups lifespan in an effort to band aid their market potential. Nvidia recovered fast though, with the FX5900 and revised FX5950's, and ATI were no longer at a huge advantage going into the next generation.

[@jasper8291]

I really like your videos: the music, the pace and the retro stuff you show, I love it! Keep up the good work!

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Cheers man, glad you enjoy it

[@isaiahhiggins]

Thanks Budget-Builds for getting me into the pc building/gaming hobby. It's always such a good feeling to snag an awesome deal of an awesome underrated component.

[@mentality-monster]

Who could dislike these videos? That one person must have a darkness in their heart.

[@Voidkitty_]

I got one in pc i bought off ebay for like $40 with a pentium d 3.3ghz kind of a cool piece of kit I put it in my main desktop to see how it handled and I think it was a lack of drivers but I was amused to see that it lagged when I moved my mouse or did anything (I was on void linux with kde plasma) still in the original machine running xp or a minimal linux install it is pretty cool to use Also watching your channel I'm starting to realize that you can truly have a good time gaming on any computer as long as you play games that your hardware is suited to, even if all you can play is retro titles from the 90s and 2000s

[@certs743]

ATI used to be very good at making GPUs that were surprisingly long lived and ran things they had no business working with. I remember my parent's old PC which was the first computer we had with broadband about 97 ish and well it came with an ATI Rage 128 integrated GPU and I remember gaming on that and playing games it probably should not have even started based on the minimum requirements. I was super excited in 2004 when I was working at a PC shop and was allowed to take home a Riva TNT 2 that they were just going to bin to upgrade the system. lol

[@niwatorimeat]

I remember using this card with Omega Drivers and felt like a badass.

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

I believe AMD rebadged this gpu's core one more time and called it the x1050. It had windows7 driver support. (9550 --> X300 --> x1050)

[@TridonsEve]

The 9550 had a different chip, though the shader count was the same. They were built on different lithographies, with different interfaces and clocked at different frequencies. The x1050 might be concidered a rebadge by some since it had the same chip as x300, but it came with higher tdp and DDR2 (instead of the older DDR) so it was in another performance bracket. Looking at at most of the generations before the 2000 series, there was a lot of messy setups and segmentation that must have made it really hard for consumers to have reasonable expectations for the performance of the cards they were looking at before buying.

[@retrogeek4372]

The X1050 series was a weird one. The 64bit version was indeed an RV370 variant, so basically a rebranded X300SE, but there was a 128bit version and I own one of those with the RV410 which is basically an X700.

[@blakelove01]

OMG THAT ANIMUSIC THING WAS PLAYED SO MUCH IN MY 3RD GRADE MUSIC CLASS I WAS SO STUNNED WATCHING IT

[@hivaidz3250]

I've literally been looking for a reason to live and Budget just uploaded a classic GPU review. Reason: Now abundant

[@ganerus5293]

I say without budget builds I would still be a console peasant, Thank you kind sir.

[@notthedroidsyourelookingfo4026]

Ooh, I had completely forgotten Animusic! That was amazing when I first saw it as a teen!

[@nathanielthomas4437]

I've been here since the first 1000 subs. Holy crap you grew fast.

[@mxzaiw2744]

My laptop has an x1400 and it kicks ass on older games!

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

Hmm, the Minecraft footage looked strange, the colours were bizarre but I kind of love them! Same with generals! How were they filmed?

[@Revan3821]

Radeon x300 128mb from HIS was my first gpu. It's still on my shelf and even works)

[@pvtnewb]

Imagine decades from now, and this man is reviewing the "old" Polaris arch and stuff

[@pierregrobbelaar9116]

I have one of these lying around somewhere(i miss placed it when i cleaned up my old hardware)i may setup a retro gaming pc with my old 939 amd.Kinda to lazy to get on it lol.

[@philscomputerlab]

Single digit CPU load :D I didn't know how the X300 fits into the other cards, but when you mentioned the 9550 with 64 Bit interface, I was right at home :) I wonder, are there Windows 98 drivers for the X300 card?

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Catalyst 5.2 supports WIndows 98 and these Drivers from what ive found, personally I found them best with the CRT_Emu Drivers on XP, but the X Series was always good to me in terms of driver stability. Personally id love to see your take on the X300 and its retro uses, especially with that composite output.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@BudgetBuildsOfficial I will likely review the 9550 at some point. I was told it was excellent value back in the day and overclocked well.

[@howtobebasic2122]

this card is the probably the Very first GPU that have support for PCI express X16 slot meaning this card will work on any PC that has a PCI express slot.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

+1 Exactly why i use one for getting into BIOS on motherboards.

[@GmGTrials]

I actually went and found one on Marketplace for $3 usd that I went and picked up after this video, so cheers!

[@spngextras]

Great video! I have an x1650 Pro 512MB that I got for $29, and I ended up pairing it with a Northwood Pentium 4.

[@Lynnfield3440]

I got a great deal on one, got it new unopened for 10 bucks. Works great for older games.

[@megwattt1502]

Oh, my first graphics card. It was shipped with a DELL computer with a P4 3.2GHz. My version used Hypermemory and only had 32MB VRAM (it can use up to 128MB RAM with HyperMemory). It was pretty buggy with some OpenGL games: setting texture quality too high drooped FPS to 1-2. I've another radeon X300SE which looks like yours and have 128MB VRAM, and doesn't have the problem mentioned before. I finally brought a new PC in 2010 and get rid of this GPU The Unigine problem is due to the fact that "recent" Unigine benchmarks requires at least Shader Model 3.0 while this GPU can only handle version 2.0. A lot of modern DX9 games fails because of that. The Minecraft problem should only happens with recent version, as Version 1.8 used to works fine. And for those who are wondering, this card can run Crysis. The only downside is performance, which, if I remember correctly, was around 10FPS in forest area with minimum settings.

[@synixx9286]

The ati 9250 256mb was the first card i upgraded to when i got into PC upgrading. It had a celeron D 2.93ghz and 512mb ram. Helped me play UT2004 smoothly!

[@s737500]

Just found one of these in the trash...and its the 256MB Asus version :-) RV370LE/TD/256M Thanks for the video.

[@alfabetet7489]

love that you are using kotor music

[@frogz]

i still have atleast 2 or 3 similar x300/x600 cards, i bought them on ebay as an UPGRADE in my pentium 4 days

[@robbutterill1426]

i remember having the family pc being upgraded by my dad buying one of these. must have been a massive upgrade because since our internet was crap had to make do with 90’s rpgs and the virtual chess game

[@adeebighani8807]

Oh my god I have this exact same card I took out of an old system and haven’t been able to figure out what it was until now

[@CleetusSilversurfer]

The composite output is quiete good i might add, i have a card like this in my old developer machine as a display adapter (second monitor, and it freed up 128mb ram). Strange thing was, that i tried worms 3d on it, and with a core 2 duo 3ghz, the vga card struggled with the game, while my girlfriend's old pc with some athlon xp 1800 and a Ti4600 maybe ran the game fine on the same resolution. But what was really baffling thing, that if i ran an emulator such as Kega Fusion on the second screen, the GPU would not accelerate that, and burdened my CPU. I've used two 1280x1024 screens, so it should be doable for this GPU.

[@tsumuphi9206]

8:19 That's something I've never seen in GTA:SA before, wow

[@TheRealWALLABI]

Back in the day I used to run a X300 (the 128 mb DDR2 version), along with a good old Pentium D in one of the computers at my high school's "gaming room", and that thing could actually run Battlefield 2 in 1024*768 with Low settings at kinda 30-35 fps! It was actually playable! It could also run CS 1.6 flawlessly and Minecraft was fine as well. We had other PCs, most of them running nvidia FX5700LE GPUs, one had a GT430, and the "master PC", which was basically reserved for me, ran a GTS250, that thing was a beast compared to the rest, it could even run Crysis 2 on Medium! Dang the fun that we had playing Battlefield 2 on LAN with a grand total of 6 working (kind of) computers! We used bots to fill the other available slots, and we genuinely had a blast back then! We even used to rock an old Pentium 4 PC with an nvidia Riva TNT2 (that we had found in the school basement) as the "dedicated BF2 LAN server" xD I spent as much of my free time playing LAN with my buddies than I spent fixing the PCs and trying to gather used parts to build some more! Those days were so much fun!

[@thatscottishguy5105]

I know this is a rather old video but I'm wondering if you ever got around to reviewing that laptop you mentioned at the end of the video? I recently purchased a lot of 4 laptops from an auction, one of them being a Dell Inspiron 6000 with an Intel Pentium M 1.6 GHz and an ATI RADEON X300 and I was surprised with the decent gaming performance on older titles. Would be an interesting video.

[@jdangberg]

ah, the x300/x300se. I believe it was the very first PCI express card made? anyway, I have one, and it was integral to my first true HTPC build, when the TV was CRT and I was using the S video output with a foxconn ebot (funky little case) and a WinTV PVR150 dual tuner hardware mpeg2 capture card, running XP MCE. worked great for that. and if i need to boot a broken computer, it's good to work for any pci express board. good for trouble shooting. In these days of HDMI everything, well, it hangs now on the wall of hardware history in my basement.

[@totalrandomtechnolog]

I was still rocking a Geforce 3 when this card was released ✌

[@aviumcaravan]

i have an ATi Radeon X300 SE HyperMemory in my daily driver, it's quite solid

[@nassygc]

I have one of these, but with more VRAM. 128mb or 256mb i guess. It gets the job done, when playing games of its time (e.g. GTA SA, True Crime, NFS UG2).

[@Ammageddon89]

X300 , that was a long time ago. Mine actually overclocked to over 500Mhz with an active cooler on it. A friend said he got 625MHz out of it

[@x3mality160486]

Got one from Sapphire, it's not so far from integrated GPU, which means that this board is for use in old titles

[@Adminstraitor]

I used to play spore with one of these years ago. Now I have a 1080ti. It was quite the improvement.

[@PSWii360onBaSS]

I had the x600 at one one point. Was a surprisingly great graphics card for what I was playing at the time.

[@8bvg300]

I trash pucked a x600 from a dell a couple of weeks ago. Still waiting to test it

[@martiduff]

I have the Ati radeon x600 with pentium d 820 . I still play league of legends on it :)

[@nashcomp]

This card approximately sell at 6 usd, and the hd3450 at 7 usd, hd 4550 at 9 usd the dx11 5450/6450 sells at 10usd.

[@JayTsPhoto]

heyyy i had one of these, i overclocked the hell out of it to play fear. Ive always dreamed of getting an x800 back when i had this card lol

[@cortezbaldur413]

My first gpu was the hd 5450 with 512mb of vram and man was it bad! Till i saw this gpu in ur video.

[@legendp2011]

I did manage to get crysis 1 running on the x300. at 640x480 around 8fps (I had the laptop version of this card. in a dell inspiron 6000. mostly played FEAR, HALO and Need For Speed Most Wanted)

[@raventerrorz6302]

i have an old x1600 pro still, just been laying around lately but i really wanna revive the old system. i still have the board and the e6900

[@mrbenjaski]

Your Videos are awesome keep going man!

[@thedungeondelver]

I just found out I have one of those exact cards lying here on my desk! :O

[@gamingwithcrazycomedian6586]

Great video like always

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Cheers

[@Shard113]

Could you review any of the GeForce 7300 Gt, gs, le /7600-7800 cards from NVIDIA? I am curious how those aged .

[@dark2koneko]

Oh god, i had an x300. This was really bad. It lagged on the desktop even at 1440x900. For context, i used this for a 3rd monitor whilst using a 4870 as my main card when it was relevant.

[@TridonsEve]

I know this was over half a year ago, but do you remember much of how it was to use? You mention it was sluggish in some win 10 tasks like Discord on higher resolutions. Did you ever test youtube or other streaming services? I'm planning to combine an old card with a modern computer, not to be smart or reasonable, but to experiment and have some fun with the first generation of PCI-e cards (going from DVI source to HDMI input.) I will also have to find a way to hack around having both a driver for a modern main card and a simple driver for the older card enabling it to be used for more than just showing a Notepad document at 480p.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Windows 10 actually has Dual GPU Support built in, I actually used to drive an entire monitor off the VGA Port with an R8 285 running the other two.

[@TridonsEve]

@@BudgetBuildsOfficial That's promising! I've only used that with modern cards (Vega plus APU for separate monitors). Did the drivers play nicely considering the 285 is so much newer, or did it bugger the x300 to perform poorly in desktop tasks?

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Performed about as well as you'd expect. Although HW Accelerated Programs would sometimes lag slightly on the X300 VGA Display. But I was running 1050p and rather heavy transparent programs.

[@Stewcumber]

I feel your pain in C&C Generals. I had to play it with an Nvidia FX5200 :(

[@darkflay12345]

nice :) found my new gaming gpu! the value is insane

[@Alexlfm]

So I’m guessing you got steam from the ATI driver promo then? I first got it from the promotion they did for HL2 with the 9600s (had an AIW, great card ) and was a little put off by not actually getting a disc... No complaints of course now.

[@continentalfil]

Sea Breeze! That's Snake's killin' music.

[@retkimuna]

Nice video, as always!

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Cheers

[@matthewsidaway1437]

I love your voice, have you ever thought of doing some audiobooks?

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Wouldn't mind giving it a go.

[@martincoufalik9101]

Ahh there memories. This generation used to be like: "You have older GPU? You are fine. You want new gen one? Get X800 or stick with old one."

[@drzeissler]

If I would make those comparisons, I would go for the best looking older games. Call it the other way around.

[@tucker21222]

I would definitely think about Cooling even though the card is not high spect like say the x like some of the X 800 series but even then I think those were mid-range we definitely come a long ways as far as graphics cards go but one of the reasons why I like a lot of the older ones it seems like they have more class like a lot of the older ones had cool designs right on the front of the GPU anyways thanks a bunch for this great video it's a nice retrospective

[@CaveyMoth]

Ooh, my first PC came with an X300! What a potato! I later upgraded it to an X1050, but my motherboard could not power the integrated fan..so it overheated like crazy... RIP.

[@colehorowitz9475]

You should definitely review that laptop

[@chillinfartdotcc]

A bit late but one question. Some tips to take advantage of Hypermemory or Turbocache? Got bad references from both in the past and should be deactivated, but how people did worked with them? Also, my old Radeon 7500 (32MB) was capable of 1024x768 (low) in C&C: Generals. Why this can't?

[@paulb4uk]

composite out could be handy might be able to copy some stuff to vhs for a bit of fun .

[@gvi341984]

Why not run it on Windows XP lite? Win7 and 10 kills performance

[@registeredblindgamer4350]

For cards in the 2000-2006 region should test games like unreal tournament 2004 and stalker shadow of Chernobyl

[@malrofo]

Had an x1050 for the longest time. That card did everything I threw at it

[@exoticfn1004]

Nice video man

[@aleksbiteman5324]

What would you say the best GPU you can get for under $30 is? Just built an Optiplex 990 i5 2500 with a GTX 560 for $70, manages Rocket League at 60FPS and Fortnite at around 70-80, pretty reasonable!

[@gqmeboi_2135]

I found this card in some old dell in my basement. Traced the number to get this.

[@JustinnRC]

I was riding my bike when I somehow found this on the edge and I was amazed so I went home my parents told me to throw it away but as u think I ignored them and I lookup what it may be but I could not find out what it was so I threw it away as I saw the thumbnail of this title j wanted to die

[@parrotbirb]

Ooooh I still had this card in my collection

[@martinh88]

Can you do a Radeon 9800 Pro review?? That was the GPU I put in my first build back in 2005.

[@LloydLynx]

So I have a radeon 9200 128mb and Windows XP idles at 250mb RAM with the drivers installed, but the MX 440 and it's drivers idle at 115mb. Ant idea why? This is a system with 512mb of RAM.