Spped up an old PC for Gaming

  • Thread starter Thread starter Christoph Vogelbusch
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Christoph Vogelbusch

Hi,

I got an old 500MHz P3 with an Rage128 inside. I'm thinking of buying a
nVidia MX4000 so it's at leas good for some gaming.

The question now is, does that make sense?
I know that old Graphic cards take a lot of performance from the CPU as
they do only part of the calculation.
Is a 500MHz CPu fast enough to provide a MX4000 with all the data it needs?

Thanks for any information.

Greetings
Christoph
 
If you plan on playing any of the latest games you're going to need a better
card than that, unless you like --
Watching slide shows
Turning down the effects enough to physically count the polly's
Non 3D intensive game like Hoyle Casino (which still might give that card a
run for it's money)

It will also be hampered even more because of the other system specs. I
guess the question is what games do you plan on playing?
--


"I don't cheat to survive. I cheat to LIVE!!"

- Alceryes
 
Hi,

I got an old 500MHz P3 with an Rage128 inside. I'm thinking of buying a
nVidia MX4000 so it's at leas good for some gaming.

The question now is, does that make sense?

Depends on the games.
For the most part, no it doesn't make sense unless you're
only playing VERY old games. Most anything demanding enough
to need a better video card will also need a faster CPU. To
give you an idea, I once did a lot of benchmarking on an
nVidia TNT2 (original, "good" version at the time, not the
crippled crap nVidia later sold as the "m64" or "vanta"),
and found that by swapping out a 600MHz CPU and in a 1.2GHz
CPU, the performance increase was very nearly linear... even
on an old TNT2 the CPU was holding it back.

What an old CPU like that would allow paired with any modern
budget video card, is to play very old games at higher
resolutions... not necessarily anything more than that.

I know that old Graphic cards take a lot of performance from the CPU as
they do only part of the calculation.
Is a 500MHz CPu fast enough to provide a MX4000 with all the data it needs?

Nope. The cheapest way to get a significant performance
increase might be to either buy a CPU upgrade first... if
the board will accept Coppermines then you could get a
1.1GHz P3 or Celeron (plus the video card) or next most
expensive might be an nForce2 motherboard with integrated
video, a couple of PC3200 generic memory modules and the
cheapest Athlon XP or Sempron you can find. Normally I
dont' recommend generic memory but if it's PC3200 running at
only PC2700 or PC2100 "speed" it's generally ok unless
outright defective.... though YMMV.
 
Christoph Vogelbusch:
Is a 500MHz CPu fast enough to provide a MX4000 with all the data it
needs?

The CPU will be your limiting factor. I'm not sure but I think the MX4000
is roughly eqivalent to a Geforce 2, which should be a significant boost
in games for your old system. I suspect that you will still be limited in
the games you can play. Some games that I used to play on my K6-3
400Mhz/Voodoo3 system were: Unreal Tournament, Quake 2 & 3, Mechwarrior 3.
All those games were perfectly playable so you would be fine with those
and maybe a generation higher.

The MX4000 isn't very expensive but there are a few other cards that would
be good choices if you can find them in the $15-20 range: The Kyro II,
original Geforce, Geforce 2, Radeon 7000 or 7500.
 
Alceryes said:
If you plan on playing any of the latest games you're going to need a better
card than that, unless you like --
Watching slide shows
Turning down the effects enough to physically count the polly's
Non 3D intensive game like Hoyle Casino (which still might give that card a
run for it's money)
I don't want to play the latest games, the newest one I like to play it
Neverwinter Nights. That one works with 450MHz beginnning.

The question is what is the best Card that would still make sense in
that computer and is affordable, e.g. a used one.

Greetings from germany
Christoph
 
I don't want to play the latest games, the newest one I like to play it
Neverwinter Nights. That one works with 450MHz beginnning.

The question is what is the best Card that would still make sense in
that computer and is affordable, e.g. a used one.

Greetings from germany
Christoph


You might look for Geforce 2 (preferribly not "MX") 32MB,
maybe around $10-20 used?
 
Christoph Vogelbusch:
The question is what is the best Card that would still make sense in
that computer and is affordable, e.g. a used one.

I gave you a number of options. If you missed the post, here are my
suggestions in addition to the MX card:
The Kyro II, original Geforce, Geforce 2, Radeon 7000 or 7500.
 
My very old Pentium Classic 200MHz ran fine with old 3D games as long
as
it had an (also old) 3dfx video card in it (and ran it in Windows-95).
Your
500MHz Pentium III should be able to run many more games than my old
computer can handle. If you can add a good 3D video card in it, you
will
get good performance in playing 2nd-tier games from your relatively
"recent" PC.

I guess the questions are "Which games?" and "How cheap the good 3D
video card?"

I have a feeling that your PC probably cannot handle the most recent
games. But if you are willing to buy games from the discount bin, you
probably can have a good time playing games with your PC.

The other thing is that you need to get a very low cost 3D video card
in order to justify upgrading the video component instead of upgrading
the CPU or buying a new PC. If you spend a lot of money on a video
card, you may as well upgrading the motherboard and the CPU; if you
want to upgrade the motherboard and the CPU, you may find that
buying a new PC will give you more value.

BTW, my old PC now runs very slow after I installed Windows-ME in it.
I should have installed Windows-98SE instead of ME.

Jay Chan
 
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