Upgraded from Intel P2-400 to T-Bird 900 a while ago...questions.

[MallowJr]

I used to own an intel P2-400 with 128 PC100 RAM and Voodoo3 GFX on Win98.
I built my own PC the next summer and sold off my 400 mhz. I used an Abit KT7 and Tbird 900, Voodoo 5 and 256 PC133 RAM (on win98 and win2k). My performance is indeed better, maybe I was expecting too much - I don't see a GREAT performance increase in games. Whereas I may have ran counterstrike at 40 FPS earlier, I now can run in the low 50s to mid 50s. This makes me weary upgrading to a Tbird 1.4gz and/or GeForce 3. I have 2 hard drives, one 10 gig and another 30 gig (ATA 100, 7200 RPM). THe 10 gig one is the same drive I bought from dell. Someone told me that it runs at ATA 66 when hooked up to the dell/intel motherboard, but it's actually an ATA 33 drive. Could this have any reasoning behind why I don't feel a great increase in games I run through win98? Win 98 is still hard drive crunchy at times when loading different windows, win2k is on my 30 gig fast drive and doesn't make a noise...it's not always fast though, going into control panel can take a few seconds sometimes compared with other slower PCs I've seen that zip it up immediately.

Just wondering what are good combos for a fast/ cheaply priced machine. I'm not sure how compatible V5 was with the Abit KT7 board in the first place, heard it's not too great.

Thanks for any input,
ELmO

 

[Parser]

If you're looking for a sense of power in games then you just really need to upgrade your video card. I don't think that anything over a 900Mhz Cpu is going to make too much difference unless you own a Geforce 3 and overclock the hell out of it.

If you don't want to go all the way to a Geforce 3 then there's nothing wrong with the 64MB Radeon (especially if you get the 5ns one), the KyroII or any of the Geforce2 line of cards.

As for the hard drives with the amount of RAM you have you shouldn't have to use too much virtual memory so the hard drives would only be important for when you initially lode levels of a game into RAM and after that they shouldn't make too much of a difference.

 

[Lichee]

that is sorta odd that u are reporting only ~50-60fps in CS. I have a p3 800 with 256 MB PC133 and an ATA100 60GXP, yet my vid card is only a voodoo3 3000. My fps are ~99 most of the time. It does drop here and there, but I'm not getting 50-60.

I would definitely say that you need to get a GTS Ultra or Radeon for your system. That voodoo5 might be holding you back some (if only they came out with rampage. <sigh>)

Lichee

 

[bigbootydaddy]

no way the voodoo5 is holding back, you might have fsaa at 4x or what not and maybe all the pretty options are on and driver conflict, u should EASILY be getting the max 99.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

via 4in1 drivers are what you need.

 

[NelsonMuntz]

I agree, Lichee's comparison to yours doesn't sound quite right. The settings that the game is set on will make a huge difference, but your comparison to your old computer should be valid as long as you use the same settings now as you used to (same resolution, # of colors, detail, etc). If you changed any of that stuff (and I know I would have) then the comparison isn't fair there either.

 

[Duvie]

I don't think ata33 is going to hold you back as much if it isn't a 7200rpm drive...move that 30gig to main OS harddrive and that is drastically goint to raise up windows and program startup times...should help in running and opening games as well...

Since the voodoo 5 is not the same vid card and a voodoo 5 in old system could have possibly had that much of a boost, I think you have something setup wrong with the voodoo 5.

Office apps are going to be mor cpu driven but can be held back by a slow accessing hdd which if it is 5400 rpms is slow compared to new 7200rpms...

Games still tend to be more video card and ram reliant then cpu as even some geforce gts's would be a bottleneck in that system with a 900 tbird.

Put a call out to the 3dfx faithful here and see if you have it set up properly....