What can I expect ?

[ianshepherd]

Hi,

I'm thinking I _really need to upgrade my aged PII 266 but am very short of cash; considering getting a Celery 466 with a Slot 1 adapter for my Epox LX 66MHz mob & G400 16MB s/h, 128 MB.

Anybody have a similar spec system ? What kind of FPS might I expect in HL ( for example ) do you think ?

Any suggestions for a better upgrade staying below £125 ?

Cheers

Ian

[tish beta2]

If you won't be getting anything with simds in it, my suggestion would be a TNT2.

[Bohrn]

Sounds good to me. I would get a 32 meg G400 tho...less texture thrashing. I use a similar setup...But my board supports other bus speeds. I am about to get the celery 433or so.

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AssuP2B ,iCeleron337, 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Yamaha PCI sound, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.30 w/beta ICD

[Ian @ work]

Bohrn or anyone else,

Am I right that because the ppga celerons are clock-locked, the multipliers on the board don't matter ? Because mine only supports up to 5x...

tish,

What is/are simds ? Not that it matters - I only just got the G400 & with the exception of really crowded areas in HL, I get between 20-25 fps, which is fine - I'm figuring the slowdown with too many opponents is cpu related, what do you think ?

Cheers

Ian

[IceStorm]

Don't know what your prices are like, but the best bang for the buck right now, for a Slot1 CPU, is the PIII-450. It's about $180 here.

Rumor has it the new batch of PIII-450's are using the PIII-600's core, and faster L2 chips...

Anywho, a PIII will give you Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE), which are needed by the TurboGL from Matrox (for now).

Just my $0.02



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Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 2x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. V2 SLI rig. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM, 10/100 5-port Linksys Ethernet switch (30~40MB/min under Win98SE)

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, 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!), Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 4x64MB EDO 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.

[Rohde]

To Ian@work (about Halflife FPS)

Do you really think 20-25 FPS in HalfLife is fine. If you play against other human players you'll have to be some kind of awesome cyborg-gamer to beat other people playing with 50-70 FPS.

But OK, if you want that little ekstra challenge I guess 20-25 FPS is fine

Also is 20-25 when gaming offline, because if it is, you'll probably be getting 15 FPS online, and that is not fine.

The question of CPU limitations :
Yes I do definetly think this is the case. I don't know what kind of CPU you have, but I have (not for much longer ) a K6-2/333 and all new games run with a crappy FPS. G400 is probably the most CPU dependent card ever produced, I have a friend who almost beat my 3Dmark score with a regular "TNT1" board.


Torben R

[Ian @ work]

Rohde & Icestorm,

Well I'm being philosophical, I guess - I get 25 fps in single-player in the later maps like Interloper - earlier on it's higher ( I haven't checked exactly what ). My point is more that if I could get _consistently 25 fps, that would be OK... As far as multiplayer goes - well that's why I need to upgrade !

Put another way; if I could get 75 by using a faster cpu I'll be delighted, but I haven't seen anyone with really high scores without a PIII - and unfortunately I don't have the option of 100 MHz FSB.

So - Celeron 466 on a 66 MHz bus, or a new mobo & cheaper CPU ? I haven't seen any combinations of mobo/PIII for £125 / $180, but I'm open to suggestions...

Cheers

Ian

PS. Just Ian will do... :-) ( How do I do those yellow smileys ? )

[LAMFDTK]

The LX chipset is your first hurdle. Get a good 100$ board with a BX then get a celery if you are broke. They are cheaper than a dinner with a fat girl with a movie.

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PIII-450@504, 128 HDSRAM, Asus P3BF, G400/32, SBLive!, Nokia 447Xi 17", oh yea, a nice floppy drive

[ianshepherd]

Recommendations ? All kindsa scare posts about P2Bs...

Ian

[Rohde]

Ian, you make smileys the way you wrote it, except for the "-". Check the FAQ (linked on top of the page) to see all the kinds of smileys you can make.

It's even cooler making smileys with the new ones added (used to be dull black&yellow smileys)


Torben R

[ianshepherd]

OK now I'm happy

[Bohrn]

Ian, a celeron 466 runs at 7x66 so I guess they cant be locked at 5. Also, does your board support a 75mhz fsb? If so, it (cel466) is almost guaranteed to run at that speed. 7x75 = 525. That should really haul some pixellated butt! No SSE, but cheap like the date mentioned by our dear LMFDTK.

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AssuP2B ,iCeleron337, 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Yamaha PCI sound, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.30 w/beta ICD

[ianshepherd]

Bohrn,

As far as I know I can't increase the FSB ( nothing in the manual or bios ) but Epox support say it supports all current Celerons, so I assume it'll run happily with a 466, whatever the multiplier is set to on the board ( via dip-switches ).

Can anyone confirm this, or suggest any undocumented ways to increase the FSB ? It's an EP61 LXA-M. ( Snappy, huh ? )

Cheers

Ian