is this a lost cause?
 

if I have an intel 845 integrated video card, will this be able to render any of the popular games ok enough to be enjoyable? I am not much of a gamer, asking again for my kids.

i dont think so... you would probably want either an ati radeon 9000 (or higher) or a good nvidia card.

Depends on the games - tuxracer and stuff like that is working here but the cheapest of compatible graphics cards would do a better job for you.

Some games, like America's army, wont work at all on an intel intergrated graphics chip. Others should run, albeit slow and they won't be the prettiest things to look at. Maybe you can check out rtcw, Haven't tried that one out myself yet though.

i got ut working fine but under kernel 2.4 only
on 2.6.1 i am facing some problem

What are you getting? Any error?

not an error but i can't play the game using the opengl or the sdl render
i can only play using the software render which is a bad idea to use when playing a game for hours

when i use opengl the game start but it becomes damn slow and laggy