is a cel300a obsolete?

[spanky]

should i even bother trying to build it up? probably for timid gaming and web browsing. what video card should i pair it up with? i have a voodoo3 2000 pci laying around. would that be a good match?

 

[VTrider]

Ahhh, I get all choked up when I see a Celly 300a thread [sigh] - memories. I have a brother who is still running a old Celly 300a, he does light gaming w/TNT2 16mb card. That Voodoo3 2000 sounds like an appropriate match for it also. Do you have that Celly overclocked to 450mhz also?

-VTrider

 

[BreakApart]

Built a 300a, V3 system for my sister 3 years ago.... It's still plenty fast for her-(surfing, chatting, and office apps)

I did change the OS to W2K and boosted her to 256mb, other than that she'll be fine for another 2 years.

 

[spanky]

VTrider: nah i dun think my celery can do 450. i got it off fs/ft from a guy claiming it did 450, but i never got it there. perhaps its my mobo. but its all good. i am not much of an o/c'er 😛 i just want another machine to run Counter-Strike so i can have little lan parties 😀

 

[Brian48]

Is this a retail or OEM C300a? I've never seen a Malaysia retail C300a that couldn't do 450mhz so long as the rest of the system was performing correctly. The OEM's are generally good overclockers as well, however some may need a little boost in voltage to run stable. Another problem with older boxes is that the RAM may be PC66 and some older DIMMs won't do 100mhz reliably. I had a couple of old 32mb PC66 sticks that did this.

 

[John]

<< is a cel300a obsolete? >>



Far from obsolete, but far from cutting edge. Add at least 256MB ram and your voodoo, and enjoy new life. 🙂

 

[HalfCrazy]

I build the following system below for my mom which is fast enough for her. Since she mostly only surf the net for 'free' quilt patterns and e-mail her friends around the world. Also play a few games of Mahjongg and type a few letters. I can't remember the brand name of all the items in my moms system. But you get the point on what it is. 🙂

PentiumII 266mhz
DFI P2XBL (Mobo)
128mb PC100 Crucial
4mb S3 VideoCard
ISA Sound Card (Off the wall brand name)
24x CD-Rom
56k USR Win Modem.
Win98se

 

[CZroe]

<< is a cel300a obsolete? >>

FAR from it. The 300a EASILY overclocks to a 100MHz FSB (Standard FSB for all the other motherboard components to adjuct to) with a little extra cooling (Try an Athlon's FOP-32😉). It may have only half the L2 cache of a PII or PIII, but it's FULL SPEED cache, and therefore the performance will equal or slightly outperform a Slot1 1/2 speed L2 cache PII or PIII at the same clock speed (No SSE though of course). I'm running dual 366MHz Celeron A's at 550Mhz and the system kicks ass with a good video card. Don't give it no stinkin' Voodoo3 2000... Go for a good Geforce2 at least...

 

[Pauli]

Just last Sunday, I sold a buddy my old P3/700@933, GF2Ti, 256MB system to replace the last system I built for him, a Celly 300a @ 450, Voodoo 3 3000 (originally had a Banshee), 128MB RAM. He had it for around 3 years and played alot of UT Tourney as well as Web surfing and general use. He was very happy with it. He has noticed a nice speedup in gameplay with the new system, but that 300a system performed like a champ for quite a long time. Not a great machine for Counter-Strike, especially if you can't get it to 450. Probably need a faster video card if you really want to have a good gaming experience. Should be fantastic for Web surfing, Word, Excel, or MP3 playing.

 

[nortexoid]

install a lightweight linux distro and window manager....it'll feel as fast as a processor twice or three tiems the speed running windows.

as for CS...if u wanted to, pair it up w/ win98se and drop in that voodoo...OGL at 800x600 should be sufficient...u might have to knock it down to 640x480 dpeending on how comfortable u feel w/ the framerate.

 

[spanky]

<< Don't give it no stinkin' Voodoo3 2000... >>



hey... no voodoo bashing! my voodoo3 2000 & voodoo5 5500 were awesome cards. i've had them in CS boxes til i upgraded to my radeon 8500 & asus v6800 (gf256) 😛

 

[Boogak]

My Voodoo3 2000 was still able to push 60+ FPS using WickedGL drivers in Counter Strike @ 1024x768. This was with a p3 800 though, but you should still be able to get similar framerates in 800x600 and for sure at 640x480.

 

[VTrider]

Yeah there's nothing wrong with a voodoo in that system, celly 300a and voodoo are like two peas in a pod! Besides, you have it laying around right? Spending $50.00 on a low end GT2 card would be silly and probably overkill for that system anyway. As others pointed out already, the 300a overclock to 450mhz was one of the easiest overclocks in history, you don't need extra cooling - that's not whats holding you back, I don't ever recall any of those old 266 (SL2QG) and 300a chips needing extra cooling? The situation is probably that your memory is PC66 and won't perform at the 100fsb, if you can get your hands on any older PC100 you should do that. 450mhz would be a 50% overclock, this would definately spring some new life in that machine.

-VTrider

 

[Mday]

as much to say that for how much you paid for the 300a, you can get a MUCH FASTER chip today, like 4x the perf maybe.

but that 300a even not overclocked can do things.

 

[spanky]

mday: i set me back $18 shipped with hsf. 🙂

vtrider: u're probably onto something about the ram. i'll try to get a hold of some quality pc100 ram and see how this thing likes it 😀

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

my p233mmx is fast enough to surf and irc and all the normal things i always do. it loads web pages a bit slow, but not unbearably slow. scp runs kind of slow when i transfer 30MB or so though. but a celly 300a is not bad at all, o/c it as much as you can, and it can do just about anything thats not super intense like heavy video/audio/image editing, really intense 3d games, encoding mp3s, etc...

 

[blackhawk]

Nostalgia.........that would be a great combo for general use. Go for it. Not many 300's wouldn't do 450 if the mb could select it.

 

[RMXO]

i still have 2 celly 300a. all able to do 500 with my ABit BH6 & BX6 mobos. i retired it ever since i went AMD but gonna bring them back to run my Linux boxes. those was the good o' days.

 

[BFG10K]

is a cel300a obsolete?

Absolutely. So unless you plan on only surfing the web, emailing, using MS Office and playing lighweight 2D games then don't bother getting one.

As for a video card, a GTS-V should be quite good for that processor.

 

[cirrus1]

My play machine has the following specs:

PII 350@433 124 mhz FSB
Asus P2B-F
TNT2 M64 w. 32 MB ram.

Currently have 128 MB ram and Win 98 on it, and it makes quite a decent machine for playing CS, and other stuff 🙂