Need a little bit of ooomph!!!

[swanky]

Hi!

I posted a thread a couple of days ago in another section, because I was/am thinking about upgrading my system.

It's a 1.33 GHz Athlon (266MHz) coupled with a MSI K7T-Turbo mobo, 256MB of SDRAM, and a GeForce2 Pro humming in the background.

For being almost 18 months old, it's served me well - but then came UT2003 and all the new goodies based on that game engine...

So my dilemma is this:

- I want to be able to keep up with these new games, but since I'm happy with my machine for all other purposes I don't want to do much upgrading before Hammer makes it's way in 2003 (perhaps....).

I've looked at the CPU scaling article here at Anandtech, and it seems like a GeForce3, GeForce4 or ATI Radeon 8500 would be the most cost effective option for me. I can afford every GPU on the market right now, but I seriously dislike throwing money out the window.

Of course, a Radeon 9700Pro would be nice. After all I could just keep it when I upgrade next time. Does anyone have any input on this?

Thanks,

swanky

 

[rancherlee]

If you look around you can find 128meg radeon 8500le's for 110$ shipped, that will probibly be your best performance per dollar with your rig. I've even found retail 8500's for 140$ which is still a great price. Or if you can find a geforce 4 TI4200 128meg for under 150$.
My retail 8500 Vs. Friends TI4200 is pretty close (his is 5-10% faster at stock clock speed) but we both agree that the radeon IQ looks a bit better so it comes down to whats more important, SPEED or Quality.