got a b-day coming up ... what to get ...

[ajbrown]

ive currently got a
3 gig HD (lol, i know)
192Mb ram
amd k6-2 500
5VMD VIA MVP3 mainboard
voodoo3 3000

im getting about 45 fps in q3.. using most settings down.

what would be a good upgrade for me to get (video card, im gonna take care of the HD)
plz, dont rspond with get a new system, or new mobo.. i really dont want to deal with that.
would a geforce be the answer? geforce2?
thx in advance

[Ultima]

If you were to get a gforce or a gforce 2, you should see major improvement.

Somewhere around here I saw a post that someone had a PII 400Mhz with 128Mb and a gforce 2!!!!

He got a score of 3800 in 3DMark2000 and that is pretty good for a PII 400Mhz.

So you should be able to get at least that score if ya get a gforce 2.
But even with a gforce 1 you should get major improvement.

Pim

[krusty the klown]

Will the CPU or the graphics card be the bottleneck in this system???

I'm not sure, but my guess is the CPU.

If this is the case, a decent cooling setup (praps peltier and a power supply for the pelty?) to OC the chip to ~600MHz might give you a healthy increase in FPS. You also might want to throw in a decent system case with built in fans, something like these:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Cases_Power_Supplies_7.html

[Ultima]

You might be right Krusty, but know the following!!

The gforce was so "revolutionary, cause it has a gpu, and therefor less dependant of the cpu, as the tnt1 and 2 are.

Such a cpu will be a bottleneck, but not as much with the gforce series as with the tnt series!!!

Pim

[krusty the klown]

Kewl - I was just thinking that a K6-500 might be a bottleneck, cos I get a significant increase in FPS running my V3 3000 with my P3 clocking at 852 compared to clocking it at 733.

I guess, in that case, a ***** hot G card should increase performance and also tolerate a major CPU upgrade in the future.

Hehe... it wouldn't hurt to clock that K6 up a bit as well http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[ajbrown]

cool, think ill go for the geforce...
get some fans.. and overclock this badboy
haha