While the 8400 might not be the most appealing card to the hardcore gamer, it is definitely a card that can handle many modern games. Don’t expect to be running Crysis well on here however.

When it comes to gaming, one of my main loves has been First Person Shooters for just about as long as they’ve been around. Of course, as I was installing this card, I was wondering just how well some of my favorite FPS games would run on a budget card such as this one.

Honestly, at a $50 price tag, I wasn’t even expecting most of my favorite shooters to even play at 10 frames per second. First test was I decided to see how my current favorite shooter, Call of Duty 4, would run on this card.

To my amazement I was able to get the 8400GS to handle a very nice framerate by sacrificing resolution. I loaded into several intense levels containing heavy firefights, and was able to keep a very nice 40 frames per second, albeit with detail levels turned down. Not bad for a $50 card at all.

Next I decided to give Dungeons and Dragons Online a shot, as I like to spend some nights running around the quests this game has to offer. While I wasn’t able to max out all the settings like on my 8800, I could run at a respectable framerate at 1680x1050 resolution with settings turned down some.

I decided Crysis was at least worth a shot, even though I wasn’t expecting much from it, so I hit the “optimal system settings” button. The game dropped all the settings to the lowest, and put the resolution at 800x600. The gameplay at this still wasn’t that good. The game peaked at about 20 fps, averaging closer to 10 fps.

Now, if you’re someone who spends their nights playing Counter Strike or World of Warcraft religiously, then the 8400GS is going to be perfect for your needs. Games using Valve’s Source engine, such as CS Source, Halflife 2, Sin Episodes, and many other games and mods, will run great on this card.

I spent a bit of time myself playing Sin Episodes, very impressed at the 50-70 frames per second I was getting. For people just looking to play older or casual games, this card is going to be a bargain at the price. Even moreso considering that not only will it run older games great, but many newer games as well, complete with DirectX 10 support for you Vista users out there, just don’t be expecting amazing graphics.