why new software cant run in old hardware

[GraveyardJimmy]

Originally Posted by raaaid

I'm up for better graphics
but why am i not given the option to tone the graphics down
is there any reason why i can't run moder Games in 256 COLORS

i can run any game with it pre 2000

There are ways that you can run games in older directx versions, but there will still be strain on the CPU for calculations. Team fortress 2 for example (and other source games), can run on directx 8. This wont work in all games as the engine may be reliant on dx9 or dx10 (or dx11) features that cannot be called in earlier versions of DX.

I think you could run the game in lower amounts of colours, but the problem is not rendering the colours, but the textures, the polygonal shapes etc. Therefore forcing a display of a lower colour amount probably wouldn't show an increase in fps.