gaming upgrade

[Prader Willi]

I have a PII 350, Riva TNT 16 mg; Monstersound MX300.
I need to upgrade for Unreal T. A PIII 650 and a Geforce cost about the same (about $225). I can't buy both-- which one would yield the better performance improvement?

[Nutrocker]

Hi

You can ignore me if you like (most do!) I suggest the Geforce

Save up for the next step after the Geforce has settled in.



------------------
Regards
Don

http://www.nutrocker.co.uk

[Migroo]

lets look at it in both ways

1) p2 350 and geforce: geforce being a gpu takes load off cpu and you get high frame rates (need 128 mb ram though)

2) p3 650 and tnt: you see a marginal improvment but the cpu will be waiting for the tnt to do its stuff. but windows will be faster

I'd go with a geforce as the games will fun fine for 8 months till you need a cpu upgrade
a m8 of mine has a 350 and a geforce and he gets 70 fps in quake 3

have fun and i hope this helped

Migroo

[Prader Willi]

Thanks, makes sense. I know that upgrading to the MX300 which takes the sound processing off of the CPU made a big difference on games like Halflife-- so it looks like GeForce is the way to go here also.

Thanks again

[Tiretool]

I hate sounding wishy washy... I really do. I consider myself an NVidia fan but, Unreal Tournament actually runs more reliably and looks better on a Voodoo card. I'd would suggest a pair of V2s in SLI or a Voodoo 3.
Don't ditch the thought about the GeForce, because I agree with Nutrocker and Migroo that the GeForce (in probably 85-90% of games) is the better card. It's just that in UT I'd have to lean towards the Voodoo family.

[Xayd]

Beat me to it Tiretool.

Look at it this way...

PIII processor at 450 or 500mhz--(150 Bucks)

Voodoo 3000 AGP---(150 bucks)

For 300 bucks you get a processor upgrade, and video upgrade.

People like to down 3dfx cards because of image quality and "not enough RAM". My thought is this...

Screw video quality, who is watching for rough lines when you're gettin shot at by four bloodthirsty 13 year olds. Same goes for RAM. 32 or 64 megs of decent RAM, or 16 megs of high quality fast RAM. What's the difference? I tested several before building my new box. Ran an ATI Rage MAXX, a Voodoo 3000, a Diamond Stealth 3, and an Asus GeForce 256. Yes, image quality was better with the Geforce, and yes, the ATI has lots of RAM. But ya know what? The Voodoo card is fast, and only fast. It ain't pretty, it ain't got lots of RAM, and it doesn't purport to be a "GPU". All it does is render images with speed.

So the question is, what do you really want. Do you want the features that come with Pentium press releases, and do you want to be able to tell everyone that you have more video RAM than they have in their entire box? Or do you just want your games to be fast?

People are easily led by lots of video RAM. Bottom line is check the RAMDAC and core clock speeds. To get the 350mhz/183mhz speeds that you can get from a slightly overclocked Voodoo 3000 (just be sure to put a fan on it), you'll pay 300 bucks for any other card. I think 3dfx's mission statement about RAM and card architecture sums it up well, and I agree with them.

"We believe gamers want speed, not perfect image detail at outrageous resolutions. Our cards are therefore designed primarily with speed in mind".

Xayd


[This message has been edited by Xayd (edited 06-07-2000).]

[Prader Willi]

Thanks for the replies. The voodoo ideas make a lot of sense. After thinking about it, spending all that money just to increase the eye candy of UT isn't a good use of my money-- however, with my current system I can only efficiently (without slowdowns) run UT at a resolution of about 570 X 320; I'd like to get to at least 800 X 600. Thanks again for the ideas.

[Xayd]

A voodoo3 overclocked to the 183mhz that the voodoo3 3500 runs at should rip it up at 800x600. The overclocking utility is free, the card should run ya about $150, maybe a bit less since the Voodoo5's are soon to ship this week.

Xayd

[kkjensen]

Xayd,
I have a self built PIII 600 w/256mbram (Micron) and a voodoo 3 3000 AGP. I'm not in a hurry to dish out $300+ dollars for the Voodoo 5 5500 or GeForce 2 and when you mentioned overclocking my voodoo 3 my eyes lit up. Every game I have Q3,UT ect run flawlessly right now but Rogue Spear Urban Operations mission pack (according to Red Storm Entertainment) is graphically intensive and on a few of the maps I'm encountering a little hesitation (video card slowing down) and I would love to speed it up a little.>>>where do I find these utilities and are they relatively safe??? please help!
Thanks in advance

quote:

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Originally posted by Xayd:
A voodoo3 overclocked to the 183mhz that the voodoo3 3500 runs at should rip it up at 800x600. The overclocking utility is free, the card should run ya about $150, maybe a bit less since the Voodoo5's are soon to ship this week.

Xayd

---

[Xayd]

Ok, the utilities can be found here...
www.tweakbase.com

But, before you use these utilities, especially before you crank the card up clock wise, you'll need to do a couple of things.

First, pop the heat sink off of the card, and you'll see a little piece of tin foil between the chip and the heatsink. Scrape it off and replace it with heat compound.

Second, you'll need a heavy duty fan to blow directly on the card. I set mine up with a case fan blowing across the card and out of a couple of open port slots in the back of the case, which works well.

Voodoo cards run hot to begin with, if you crank it up without proper heat dissipation, you're gonna fry it. If you keep it cool, you should be able to at least crank it up to the 183mhz the 3500 card runs at.

Xayd

[This message has been edited by Xayd (edited 06-11-2000).]

[Prader Willi]

Here is an article that addresses my original question. Interestingly, the article just validates what you guys already said-- but it also has plenty of graphs to look at.
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardwa...pu/default.asp