Opinions wanted...

[Carlos Kerr]

Good-day all! I am considering upgrading my current system to a better setup for "gaming". I am not a die-hard gamer as such and have very little experience with gaming in general. However, a friend gave me a half-life demo and well.... I guess the rest is history. My current marathon session took me from 10pm to 6:15am! Anyway, I'm rambling. Current setup is: AMD K6-2 350mhz,64m pc100 sdram, Creative Labs Banshee, Creative Labs Live! [value],48x Creative Labs cd-rom. I would like to keep my current mother board-DFI P5BV3+, as it is almost brand new, so I am limited to the Socket Seven configuration, that is, AMD. I am currently looking at either the K6-2 475mhz or the K6-3 450mhz cpu. Any thing wrong with my thinking? Would there be any noticable improvement over my current set up with either of these processors? Thanks Carlos

[demon]

...uhh, get a PIII. They are faster and handle overclocking better.
I know you want to keep your motherboard, but, how much are you willing to spend? You can get a good motherboard and PIII 450mhz for less than 500 bucks at a place like tccomputers.com or something.

Right now, by far the best 3D/2D card to have is a TNT2 card, or an UltraTNT2 card for that matter. Chuck that Banshee and get a TNT2.

Oh yeah, you can never have enough memory. 64 megs is pretty good for now (although there are already games that benefit from even 128 megs), but getting 128 megs would really be planning ahead for the future, and a future that isn't too far away.

Of course, you may be willing to spend only a couple hundred bucks. In that case, search for AMD bechmarks and look for some that showcase game speed. There you'll see differnces in speed between games.
Still, PIIIs really are faster...if ya got the money. I just ordered the exact same setup as my friend, PIII 450 with Asus P2B-F motherboard and 128mb pc100 and an UltraTNT2, and that baby runs SHWEET. A lot better than my other friends K6-400-something-er-other with TNT2.

[scourge]

I think your CPU speed is fine. Get a better graphics card. i.e TNT2 *ultra* (arguably the best available right now) Also, another 64 megs would make a big difference and with the way the prices on it have dropped recently, you can get a good deal. Make sure you check out www.pricewatch.com for an idea of what memory goes for. Another performance improvement is to overclock your CPU. I have an FIC 503+ with an AMD K6-2 (350)running at 392 (112x3.5). Play around with it a little. I had mine at 448 (had to use a 2.4 voltage), but it was a little flaky (I'm sure better cooling would have solved the problem because it would run Quake2 fine for about 40 minutes before crashing) so I knocked it back. Make sure you have the latest bios for your mobo and drivers for your cards. Check your mobo documentation and try some different clock settings. I think a different video card will make the most immediate and noticeable improvement. If you want to buy a new CPU (I don't think you need to), go with the K6-3 if you don't want to change out your mobo. Hope this helps and I will not be responsible for any damage you do to your machine. (not that you should have a problem)

[AuraEdge]

I ran halflife on my friends K6-2 333 64 ram 4mb videoram
Wasnt too shabby at 640x400
my PII350 w/ TNT was still alot better
but it wasnt too shabby at all!

[Carlos Kerr]

Hey Guys- Thanks for your resoponses to my post. Man there is alot to consider! I printed out your replies so I can refer to them later. Are there any compatibility problems with the AMD's? Also is it better to run one card dedicated to 2d an another card dedicated to 3d? Like I said above I am kind of new to gaming and don't really know what is best. I'll keep an eye on this thread to stay as informed as possible. Thanks again-Carlos.