Performance! New vid card first or New CPU first?

[Zwisch]

O/C is always at your own risk and does not mean that it will work. The CPUs are meant to work at a certain speed, the rest is luck. This can depend on your RAM, mobo... if you simply plan on overclocking anyways, the G400 prabably won't give you better result, so change your CPU first and leave it at it's normal speed.

[DuRaNgO]

yes, jump on a new P-3 450 if your mobo can do it, then run it @ 600, now you're ready for the g400 when you get the cash up!
jim

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PIII-500mhz @ 620 ! with an Abit BE6 mobo
128mb pc-100
Mill G400 (YAHOO!!!) 32mb @ 167/208 with MGATweak-417mhz, (2.5, 2, 2.5), PD 5.41 & bios 1.5-22
Maxtor 14.3 gb Uata66 hdd
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
32 lbs. of fans, heatsinks and aluminum ductwork
3DMark Result 5954.69 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed 9325.69 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score 2791.72 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race 65.07 FPS
Game 2 - First Person 54.89 FPS
Fill Rate 268.79 MTexels/s

[Livius]

You should post your system specs, in case you need a motherboard upgrade as well to get a P3.
My suggestion is keep the processor (can't you use a lower FSB setting for overclocking, e.g. 75MHz or 83MHz?) and get a G400 (or a TNT2 or Voodoo3) if your main concern is gaming. A faster CPU won't help much with a G200 if you want to play new games.

[Bohrn]

I would say that you should get the G400 first. I used to have a celeron300 running at 337. And a G200. I now have a G400 and a celeron466 running at 525. The biggest perf gain was the G200 - G400. There was an appreciable gain in fps with the processor upgrade but it was a larger gain with the G400. I was worried that the 337 wouldn't have enough oomph to run the G400 but it was a very pleasant surprize. Just make sure to remove the old G200 stuff and any 3rd party OpenGL drivers such as Scitech or other such. Use matroxes driver removal tool and then search your registry and windows system dir for left overs. Good luck and have fun.

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AsusP2B ,iCeleron525(7x75), 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Yamaha PCI sound, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.30 w/beta ICD

[Bohrn]

Oh, and the G200 is fill rate limited, so even with a P3600, you will run out of video throuput while your cpu is barely even above idle. It can give you triangles all day, but if the video card cannot process them fast enough then your system will still be slow. This was one of the big factors in my decision. And processors are getting cheaper every day, so get the G400 and then after Cristmas, grab a iCeleron 466 or 500 and over clock it a bit. You'll be happy.

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AsusP2B ,iCeleron525(7x75), 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Yamaha PCI sound, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.30 w/beta ICD

[Mellow_Dude]

Performance! New vid card first or New CPU first?

Hi Guys,
Should I upgrade my CPU for increased gaming performance before getting a new video card or do I get the new Video card first.

I currently have a PII 300 (SL2YK) which won't run stable at 450Mhz (with heaps of cooling) and a G200 Millenium 8 meg SGRAM card along with 96 megs PC100 ram.
The G200 won't display text correctly in IE4 or Netscape when I have run the CPU at 450Mhz (Weird!). I just borrowed a Sniper2 32Meg TNT2 M64 card which worked O.K although the system still kicked me out of some games and froze (which won't occur @ 300 Mhz.
I can run most new games well at 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 (16 or 32 bit) without problems on the G200. I only have a 15" monitor so 1024 x 768 isn't that big a deal to me.

Should I consider a Celeron upgrade or stick to PIII's. What do I replace first?

Any advice will be much appreciated!

Mellow

[Sitting Bull]

Here is a good idea. Sell the PII-300 cpu and replace it with a Celeron 300a (a 333 or 366 will work fine, too) but make sure it will overclock on the 100 MHz bus for you. Thus you will have at least a 450 MHz cpu, which is where the G400 really starts to take off, speed wise. Then get whatever G400 you can afford. It doesn't have to a dual head model ...

[Unam]

What kind of a mobo do you have? If you have anything relatively new try getting the newer Celeron 366, almost all of these will overclock to 458 and a good portion will go to 550. If you have any cash left buy a single head OEM G400 (unless you have an extra monitor hanging around :P).

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Asus P3B-F1, PIII 600B, 128Mb PC133 RAM, 18.2 KA drive, HP CDRW & Travan drive, SB64PCI, Intel EPro+ PnP NIC, G400.

[Paddy]

I have a PII300 w/ 256Mb PC100 RAM and a crappy Legend V mobo
Bought a G400 and noticed a HUGE improvement from my last card (G100!!! and a diamond monster 3dfx voodoo 1)

I would buy the card over a new CPU anyday.
Now i have to save up for that golden P3450 or go straight for the K7 700mhz

[Goc]

Go for the vidcard dude...

IMHO we don't really need anything better than a Celery 300 for playing games... when you are not able to play the newest games anymore-buy a new vidcard... Sad-but-true. It's all part of a big machine sucking money out of our pockets but hey! Why complaint
I love it!

P.S. Just wondering... are you sure you set AGP clock to 2/3 when running CPU at 450... sounds to me like you left it running on 100 Mhz FSB... same thing happened to me and I almost sold my processor... when I realized how stupid I was the proc. started running on 504 Mhz, but on 2.3V... until I find some way to cool this baby, it stays rock solid on 450 /2.0V

[Mellow_Dude]

Mellow_Dude,

Hi Dudes.

I finally got the cpu running at 450@2.2v. I'm currently trying to burn the S.O.B in.

What sort of score should I get with 3D Mark99 (lite) with my config.

PII300 SL2YK @ 450 Mhz @ 2.2v
96 MB PC100 Ram
TMC T16NBF+ M/B VIA APOLLO PLUS 133Mhz @100
Matrox Mill G200 with 8Meg SGRAM
Win 95C (98 has crashed far to many times for me)
6.5 Gig Seagate HD DMA 33
ESS Soundcard
E-Tech RVP56 Modem

I tried my mates Powercolor TNT2 M64 32Meg Sniper2 card and it gave me 2870 score in the above. G200 only gave me 2150.

Is that what I should expect?

Thanks