I own SC:PT. It came with a video card I bought a few years ago.
I'm not going to play it, though. Because it looks like this.

Honestly, what I most want from a Splinter Cell is a low-tech affair. When Double Agent was first being previewed, it sounded like you would have no tech when escaping from prison. So imagine Sam with just a shiv and maybe some trash (for diversions).
Albeit, we instead got Sam with an insanely hi-tech PDA, but whatever.

Are you running with antialiasing? I seem to recall that the first 2 games had trouble with rendering if you used it

I don't know. It's not even installed right now, I took that screenshot months ago. I tried flipping every switch I could find, messing with the .ini files and scraping the internet for information, but nothing worked, so I just gave up.

Chaos Theory and the original are by far my favorites, even if the first game had some REALLY screwy aiming issues. I never played Double Agent though I do have it. Instlaling Chaos Theory right now so I can finally beat it (HDD crashed when I was on final level, never had the heart to play it again) and then start on Double Agent.
Pandora Tomorrow was merely ok. The train scene was awesome, and the graphics were better, but the biggest thing was Lambert. His voice was completely different and for me that took away alot of his character. They got him back for Chaos Theory tho, and all was fine again.

I've played the first Splinter Cell, Chaos Theory, and Double Agent. I enjoyed Chaos Theory the most because I found it more forgiving than the original, but still true to game play that made the first game great. I also liked the option to choose action or stealth in almost any situation. There was great variety in all of the locations and all of them were interesting. Furthermore, I really enjoyed the campaign coop from Chaos Theory. I would have liked to see it explored more extensively than it was. I disliked Double Agent because I'm not really interested in Sam Fisher having to deal with moral dilemmas.
In the same way, it will take some work to convince me that Conviction is a step in the right direction. I prefer Sam Fisher sneaking through government facilities, stealing secrets, recording vital conversations, and kidnapping or killing political characters. I'm not really interested in him smashing a thug's face through a urinal.