PIII 500 or G400 32Mb advice please

[deejay]

Hi Folks,

I have a little dilemma which I hope you can advise me on.
I currently run a PII 350 with a G200 8Mb card and 128Mb of RAM. I would like to up the gaming performance of my system preferably without overclocking. I have the funds to either go for the G400 32Mb card or upgrade to a PIII 500 but not both. Which of these upgrades do you think would be the better investment?. I know the G400 is somewhat cpu dependant, so maybe the cpu upgrade first then when the prices drop go for the G400.
I'd be grateful for your thoughts.
Oh and apologies if this is in the wrong forum , but it seems to cover all areas.
Thanks.
Dave.

[Maggi]

Go for the G400 ...

CPU prices will drop like flies in the nearer future and then it'll be affordable for you to buy a fast CPU for a fair price and your G400 will take that boost thankfully onto your screen

Especially those upcoming P3-Celerons will be very interesting !

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Cheerio,
Maggi
________________________
Asus P2B-DS @ 103MHz FSB
2x P3-450 @ 464MHz
512MB CAS2 SDRAM
Millenium G400 32MB DH

[deejay]

Thanks for the advice Maggi. Any ideas on the
features the new generation celerons may have? and do you think some serious chip frying will be necessary to get the performance upto PIII levels (no doubt you have got your cryo unit ready for installation ).

Thanks again.

Dave

[SteveC]

Remember the celery is just a PII with smaller cache, but at full speed? Well, the new celeries are PIIIs with half the cache at full speed. Therefore, in normal (non server) use, they'll out perform the PIII again!

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[Jorden]

Are these P3-Celeries PPGA or SECC2 ?? Before he has to buy the Slot-1 convertor as well..

[deejay]

Hi Steve,
Forgive my ignorance but are you saying that the L1 cache will be at full speed and L2 at half speed or vice versa. Am I right in thinking that the original celerons didn't have L2 cache (presumably the PII celerons).
Hang on I've no idea what I'm talking about, can you explain in simple terms to someone fast approaching senility.

Thanks

Dave

[SteveC]

Right, the original celerons (266 & 300mhz) had NO level 2 cache. Then the Celeron 300A, and 333 were released with 128kb of L2 cache On die which ran at full clock speed. Since then, all celerons have had the 128kb of full clock speed on-die cache. The Pentium II & Pentium III has always had 512kb of cache, not on the chip, but separate, but still in the chip's cartridge / on the circuit board. It's cache has always ran at half the clock speed.
All the chips have always had L1 cache on die runnin full speed.
The new celerons have a PIII core and again 128kb of L2 cache, and running at full speed.

In normal gaming use, the celeron's faster cache makes it a faster chip than its Pentium II or III counterpart. But in Server situations, it's a big no-no.

Since around the celery 366, there have been available PPGA versions of the celery, and the slot-1 version has been phased out. Therefore, if you don't have a socket 370 mainboard, you'll need to get a slotket converter (a slot-1 circuit board with a socket 370 socket on it.) Looks just like a socket 7, but has more holes.

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[This message has been edited by SteveC (edited 09-23-1999).]

[deejay]

Thanks very much for the explanation Steve its much appreciated.

Cheers
Dave.

[PurpleHaze]

HEY.

Definitely get the G400 right now. G400 prices aren't going to drop THAT much, but the price of that P3-500 is gonna keep going down.

[deejay]

Thanks Purplehaze and all , well G400 it is then.

Dave

[IceStorm]

Best bang, least buck :

PIII-450 and a V2 SLI rig built from refurbed V2 cards from
http://www.soundblaster.com/specials/voodoo2/

This setup will set you back about $250.

If you want to have the best game performance and spend the least, this is the way to go. Mating a PIII-450 with a G200 gives you good D3D performance. Putting in the V2's gives you stellar GLide performance. You're basically covered right there.

And that's the honest truth.


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Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. V2 SLI rig. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster Live!, Altec Lansing AC5 spkrs, 2nd Parallel Port, WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 96MB of non-parity RAM, Millennium II, Intel Pro/100+ client NIC, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

All specs subject to change.

[merchant2112]

what main board are you useing. i have my p2 350 running stable at 464 clock speed at 2.2 volts with a 19.00 aavid heat sink and a few extra case fans.

i know you don't want to overclock a new cpu but over clocking you p2 might make things better or pick up a
p3 450 boxed from 188.00 to 200.00 mail order pricewatch.com and an
oem single head g400 16 meg 100.00 to 117.00
or oem 32 meg g400 single head 141.00 and up

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rags, UPS ground sucks too. (i know i used to work for the slave driveing bastards.
wow what's wrong with me today usally i just sit here read the posts anmd mumble to my self it must be that mars probe failing bulshit that nasa is trying to pull again that's got me all worked up.


[This message has been edited by merchant2112 (edited 09-24-1999).]

[Brian R.]

Merchant, what's wrong with UPS? I want to hear more rant.

[deejay]

Hi Icestorm and Merchant,

Sorry I took so long to reply to you I have been away over the weekend and have only just read your replies.
Icestorm, I have replied to your email. Thanks.

Merchant, My Mobo is a Gigabyte GA-6BXC.
I read somewhere that the PII's are rather difficult to overclock (is it just the p 350's) as intel in their wisdom fixed the max clock speed. Is it all PII 350's or just certain ones that you have to disable one of the pins on the cpu (and which pin?).
Did you have to do this?.
Certainly it looks like overclocking is the most cost effective way of having my cake and eat it, maybe I'll have to dip my toe in this area.
Any info on the matter would be much appreciated.
Not been there , not done it, and most certainly do not have the T shirt.

Thanks again.

Dave.

[KvHagedorn]

Don't forget bus speed and the new coppermines. Presuming you do not overclock, the bus speed of the celeron is only 66MHz while the P3 is 100. With coppermine this will change to 100 and 133 respectively, and the P3 will also gain the advantage of larger cache (256mb) at full speed on die. If you delay your cpu purchase, you should be able to take advantage of these new cpus, which with their .18 die should be very overclockable. (Unless, of course, Intel puts their new thought control chip on the package.)

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Kind Regards,

KvH




[This message has been edited by KvHagedorn (edited 09-27-1999).]