Should I upgrade my Voodoo 3 2000?

[Dnana]

Here is what I have:

Celeron 566 - overclocked to 950mhz on an Abit Bh-6 motherboard
384 mb ram
Voodoo 3 2000 video card (agp)
30 Gig WD hard drive (5400 rpm)
Xp home os

Problem:

I recently got Medal of Honor and I cannot play at the high settings (detailed graphics) because my system performance starts to suffer, I notice stuttering and pauses)

I want to know if I would notice a decent improvement with upgrading the video card only. I do not think I can go any higher with a cpu upgrade given my motherboard's age. I wanted to know if I got a 32MB or 64 MB card, like the Geforce mx (not top of the line, I do not want to pour too much money on an old system) would I notice much of an improvement or do I need a new computer. I am debating whether to upgrade because my computer was fine for Unreal Tournament but I started noticing performance problems with Medal of honor and I have not yet purchased Unreal 2003, which I plan to do. The real concern is whether I need to spend $800 dollars on building a new system if I can get by with a $50-$99 dollar video card upgrade. I appreciate your comments.

 

[merlocka]

On the video card side, even with the 950 CPU you could benifit from a better graphics card. I'd suggest a Radeon 8500. You would be able to obtain higher image quality.

I do not think I can go any higher with a cpu upgrade given my motherboard's age.

Check this out, although I recall a certain version of BH6 didn't have a 1/4 divider for PCI so 133MHz bus might not be an option.

In my experiance, this mod worked OK. I ran a Celeron 1.0A in a Soyo BX board and a Asus VIA board for several months with no issues. That's $50 for a chip which overclocked to over 1.4GHz. The 1.1A's are hitting 1.5GHz quite often. The benifits over your current CPU are the 256k of L2 (versus 128), the 33-40% boost in FSB, and the 40-50%% boost in clock speed.

YMMV.

 

[oldfart]

Yes a better video card would be a good idea. GF3 or Radeon 8500 would be a good bet.

You can go faster on the CPU also!

Slot-T Upgrade slocket $20
Celeron Tualatin 1.4 GHz $62

For ~ $85, you can be @ 1.4 Ghz without even overclocking. This is also a Tualatin with 256K L2.

 

[merlocka]

Cool, didn't know someone was selling the slocket now! For $20 skip the mod, it's not hard but it's not trivial either, and some slockets don't work.

 

[Dnana]

Thanks a lot fellas for the advice - I will look into upgrading both the video and cpu, now...