Play Newer Games with Old Graphics Card

So you bought a high-end system , packed with the latest processor and graphics card, several years ago, but now, it's great for most tasks except for when you want to play newer games. Now, there are games such as Crysis, F.E.A.R., Mirror's Edge, Half Life 2 Episode II, and Far Cry among others that push the envelop of PC gaming - and you're starting to feel left far behind. Unfortunately, that envelope isn't going to get far in the postal system with most older graphics cards or integrated graphics solutions.
In the last four or five years, the quality and complexity of 3D game graphics have significantly evolved, surpassing the capabilities even of decent cards such as the GeForce4 6800 or the Radeon X800 which were once, more than adequate components. These days, mainstream performance graphics cards are fairly pricey - ranging from 6,000 to 20,000 rupees - and may not suit the budget of many PC gamers. It is not just the Pakistan market that can't afford suitable graphics cards at the moment. Worldwide sales growth rate has witnessed a drop from 17.5 per cent growth in 2006 to minus 12 per cent in 2009 according to PC World.
So what do you do when you want to play newer, more demanding games with your existing system configuration?
That's where utilities such as 3D-Analyze come into play. 3D-Analyze is actually a good GPU performance-logging tool with software functions that emulate certain features of graphics cards. By emulating these GPU features, users can play newer games on GPU hardware that is not officially supported by the requirements of the games and, theoretically, cannot run them. Some of the GPU features that are a common requirement of newer games include 3D acceleration, hardware rasterising, vertex shaders, pixel shaders and hardware transform and lighting.

Getting Started
The first step is to download and configure 3D-Analyze for the game you wish to run. To download it click HERE. The downloaded file is a self-extracting executable. Extract the files to a recognisable folder; say, a folder called '3DA' on the system's boot partition (usually C:). As a rule, always check a game's minimum requirements before installing it to make sure that your PC has sufficient RAM, hard disk space, and CPU performance at the very least. After installing it, check to see if it is indeed not possible to run the game without using 3D-Analyze.
To begin, browse to the folder containing 3D-Analyze and run the executable. When the application launches, click the 'SELECT' button, navigate to the game's folder within the file dialog window and select the executable file that starts the game.
If you do not know which file it is or where it is located, then right-click on the game's icon on the desktop or start menu item and select 'Properties' from the context menu that pops up. When you have the location and filename, make the selection in 3D-Analyze as described in the previous paragraph.

Setting it Up
The slew of options and features touted by 3D-Analyze is largely overwhelming, but configuring the application is not a daunting task at all. There are a few basic options to check that will work with most, if not all games. Go ahead and check the following options:

• 'emulate HW TnL caps'
• 'emulate other DX8.1 caps'
• 'emulate pixel shader caps'
• 'force high precision pixel shader'

Enabling these options will provide you a starting point from which to configure 3D-Analyze for any particular game. You may click the 'RUN' button to see if the game will run under these base settings. If it works, exit the game and click the 'Save batch file!' button at the bottom of the application window and save the .bat file to the system's desktop. The next time you want to play the game, simply launch the .bat file on the desktop and skip the configuration process. Now, you can begin playing that game you've been longing to. The graphics won't be stellar, and there may be occasional frame drops, but at least you get to play.

At the following link you can find the list of games that can be played using 3D-Analyze.
crystalunicorn.wordpress.com/list-of-games-that-work-with-3d-analyze