Is it worth Paying 300.00 to use a GTS on a Celermine?

[jdaves]

I think that someone with a Celermine doesn't need a GTS that costs 3x more than the CPU but more like a GF2 MX for 100.00. There is no Point in dropping 300.00 in a GTS when a celermine can't even take advantage of the GTS's power.

I also think someone with a P3/T-Bird should go for getting something like a GTS/GTS Ultra since a P3/T-Bird is the most powerful Gaming CPU. Then again the P3/T-Bird should be around 700MHz at least

Just my 2 Bux

 

[Cyridian]

That is a terably insulting statement.

Why should an individual with a poor processor buy a 300$ video card. Yes I agree that it wont be used to it's fullest potential, however it does provide for some life expectancy and anyone who is using a Celemine will be able to upgrade to either a PIII(if on a crappy via mobo) or a PII Katamai. Don't instantly rule out the value of something because it can't be taken full advantage of.

One great example. Sports Cars... Or better yet SUVs, In the city! Who do you know who will be either driving through waste deep mud or doing 150KPH in a city environment.

 

[TuffGuy]

Cyridian - good point. but - it's a waste to buy the cheapest processor available and then get the best video card. the geforce is cpu limited, the cpu is not geforce limited. therefore you'd get similar results with either video card. what's the point of buying the best video card if you're not gonna use it? just to be able to say: "I have a geforce2 gts?"

kind of like getting a civic and putting a muffler and sport rims on it. looks good, but utterly useless. might as well get the prelude. or to follow your example, getting a hummer (the car) in beverly hills...

Rice-Boy Page

 

[rnimz]

I agree with you, most of the time that is the case, however, someone with a slower cpu could justify it if they planed on upgrading, or if they just wanted to run the same games they run now and make em look nicer. Lets face it if you are playing a some game at 640x480 with your old voodoo3 (which I don't really think is that old), you could get say a voodoo5/geforce2 GTS/Radeon and plug it in your system, now the game still wouldn't run much faster but now you could play at 1024x768 with FSAA enabled and stay at just about the same fps. Hey I am with you in saying that the same person is better off with a cpu upgrade, but there is always someone who is fine with the 30 fps that his cpu can give him/her and would much rather just improve the image quality, I mean that you don't always have to use every last bit of power on a card just to go a little faster, you could use that power to improve the image quality.
P.S. I have never bought a video card more that $100 so I am with you, just saying that there might be a decent reason why someone with a older cpu might want to.

-rnimz

 

[rigor3]

The geforce2mx will be fast at low res (like 800x600), but the gts will always smoke it at higher res, regardless of cpu. Due to the benefits of its design, it is not a uber cpu intensive video card.

i'd rather buy a celermine @ 950 today, and a gts2, then be stuck with a p3 @933 and a 2mx.

IF you play games, at high res.

 

[Viper GTS]

I actually tried a GeForce DDR with my Celeron 566 @ 952. It was very, very fast. At the time, the CPU cost me $160, & the GF cost me $285. It was hella fast. Look at it this way... Even if a Celeron 952 is only as fast as a P3 700, a P3 700 is no slouch. It's VERY capable of utilizing a GeForce/GeForce 2. Yes, you'll get higher performance with a faster CPU. But you'll still get very good performance.

However...

Why would someone who's using a Celeron really want to have a top end video card? If you cut the P3 corner & buy a Celeron, cut the GTS corner & buy a MX.

Or, get a P3 700e, clock it to 966, & get a GF2 GTS & clock it to 220/400. Makes for a quick system, & not a terrible amount of money. I paid $300 for my CPU several months ago, guaranteed to 933 @ default voltage. The GF2 GTS cost me $188. Absolutely wicked combo.

Viper GTS

 

[Crazybubba]

My setup is a C2 at 850 Mhz and Herc GTS 64MB. Yeah I paid 3 times more for my video card but at 1024x800 32 bit, my bottleneck is my video card.

I'm happy with my setup. I don't know what a faster cpu buys you these days. Most games are limited by memory and video card.

Warren

 

[Fish54]

Heck, I'm running a Velocity 100 w/V3 drivers and overclocked to 166 with my Duron 600@915...can you say bottleneck? Well for me, it was a choice between a mobo/chip and a videocard. I had an AMD K6-III 400@450, and so I opted to buy the mobo and processor. Someday, maybe I can afford to buy an MX or DDR, but for now I'm stuck the way I am, and pretty happy with the setup actually. If anyone wants to send me a DDR, or MX, or GTS2 for that matter, I'd love them forever... hehe
-Fish

 

[MTDEW]

533a @ 948mhz
GeForce2 GTS (32mb Gladiac)
128mb ram
Soyo 6BA+6 mobo
SB Live
30gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus

System chews up any game I throw at it.
I'm far from feeling stupid, the Celemine & GeForce2 are a great combo!

 

[TuffGuy]

around 700mhz the cpu starts being the bottleneck. and as far as i can see all of you guys are beyond 700mhz... (just a little bit)

 

[rigor2]

hmm? When playing at 1280x1024 32 bit full detail. Its the video card that can't push the frame rates. not the cpu.

Thats why a Thunderbird @ 900 and p3 @ 900 play the same speed on q3a with the same gfx card. No more DDR memory bandwidth left. start getting <60fps

 

[TuffGuy]

you're comparing a t-bird to a p3. the initial comparison was made between a celermine and a p3/t-bird...

yeah. around 700mhz the cpu starts becoming the limiting factor. that why increasing cpu speed will not give you much greater results. so at that point the card becomes important, and when you play at 1280x1024 32 bit w/ full detail you encounter the bottleneck. the only solution is to overclock the core/memory. and that gives a very nice boost indeed.

7748 3DMark2000 Points

 

[Viper GTS]

Tuffguy...

I wish I knew what was wrong with my system. My system's very close to yours, but even if I run at the following:

ABIT BF6
Pentium III 700 @ 1001 MHz, 143 MHz FSB (Same CPU as you)
128 MB Mosel Vitalic Rev2 SDRAM @ 143 MHz CAS2 (Same memory as you)
GeForce 2 GTS reference board @ 220/400 (Only 32 MB, but significantly OC'd)

I've never managed to top 6400 3DMarks. This is on a clean windows install, using Detonator 5.16's. This is WAY low, but I've never figured out the problem. Q3A never gets over ~100 fps, even at 512x384xlowest.

Annoying as hell.



Viper GTS

 

[Bartman39]

One noted problem the driver... move up to 6.26
My ram limits me I think???

P3 700e @1000mhz 1.65 volts
CUSL2 1001.a
Geforce 2 GTS 64megs Detonator 3 6.26 240/410
****Kingston PC150 (will only run 3-2-2-7,9 @143fsb)****

3dMark2000 7528+

What do think Tuff Guy???


I tried a couple of things... Unloaded my darn task bar DOH!!! and rebooted to 1050mhz 1.65 (150fsb)

3dMark2000 7941 (screw the memory...)

 

[frank828]

talk to UNTAMO in the FOR/SALE forum...he has them for around 188 bucks shipped

frank

 

[Viper GTS]

I haven't tried the new drivers yet, but at the time the 5.16's were the most recent available. Other people with my exact system were getting in the 7500 range even with the 5.16's.

I'll try installing the 6.31's, which I just downloaded. I forget, though...

How do you properly uninstall the old ones?

Viper GTS

 

[PliotronX]

Hah, I got you all beat suckas.. P3 700@933 with a TnT2 Ultra.

 

[Davegod75]

hmm prolly not...

--Dave

 

[TuffGuy]

Viper GTS - get the new drivers. v6.26 are great, i'll try v6.31 later tonight. your system is not only similar to mine, it is IDENTICAL to what i had before i got the cusl2. even then i used to get about 7200 w/o overclocking the memory. with my old 32mb geforce2 gts i used to get about 6800.

try the new drivers and see what happens. Get them here

Bartman39 - that is a very nice score indeed...

PliotronX -

 

[Viper GTS]

OK, I'll give it a try &amp; bump this back up when I have some results.

Viper GTS

 

[Viper GTS]

This is what I got:

Current system setup is:

P3 700e @ 966 (138x7.0)
GF2 GTS @ 220/400

3DMark Result 6711 3D marks
CPU Speed 470 CPU 3D marks
Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail 130.05 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail 96.84 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail 58.21 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail 161.55 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail 70.82 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail 41.75 FPS
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 685.95 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 1404.27 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light) 9178 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (4 Lights) 7971 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 6069 KTriangles/s
8MB Texture Rendering Speed 505.15 FPS
16MB Texture Rendering Speed 352.29 FPS
32MB Texture Rendering Speed 167.45 FPS
64MB Texture Rendering Speed 80.77 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass) 233.85 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass) 338.44 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass) 558.35 FPS
Bump Mapping (Environment) Not Supported

Better, but still pretty low.



Viper GTS

 

[TuffGuy]

Viper GTS - i'll do a run with your specs. i'll write back in a few and tell you my score.

 

[TuffGuy]

3DMark Result 7555 3D marks

CPU Speed 549 CPU 3D marks
Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail 146.15 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail 109.70 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail 59.07 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail 179.02 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail 85.16 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail 50.45 FPS
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 688.85 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 1400.42 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light) 14968 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (4 Lights) 7945 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 4230 KTriangles/s
8MB Texture Rendering Speed 511.62 FPS
16MB Texture Rendering Speed 384.98 FPS
32MB Texture Rendering Speed 208.23 FPS
64MB Texture Rendering Speed 104.60 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass) 250.90 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass) 333.47 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass) 551.20 FPS
Bump Mapping (Environment) Not Supported

 

[Viper GTS]

OK, from what I see it's not my video card that's the problem like I had originally thought it was. It's the CPU. My fill rate is virtually identical to yours on every category, but my CPU score is ~14% under yours. Coincidentally, but probably meaningless, multiplying my score by 1.14 comes out close to yours.

What the heck could cause this?

Viper GTS

 

[Bartman39]

Hey guys did notice that Viper GTS is running a BF6 not a CUSL2...
Also I tried the newer 6.31 drivers and at lower not overclocked (video card that is) my score improved just a little +30 but with everything maxed out 1050mhz 240/410 my score dropped about -40 SO I went back to the 6.26 and double checked to be sure, also noticed some small artifacts with the 6.31 drivers (might want to wait a couple of more days, weeks, month or two for new drivers...) Did another test I havent done too ran the voltage to 1.85 and dropped my mem timing down to 3-3-3-7,9 and booted into Winblows98SE @1099mhz but had memory issues still I need Mushkin Rev.2 Baadddddd!

Good luck Viper GTS

Thanks Tuff Guy

Get the GTS jdaves (remember ya cant polish a turd...)