is a P3 1GHZ enough 4 gaming

[mccoy26]

i have a p3 667 mhz w/256 sdram and gf2mx vid card.im planning to upgrad to a p31ghz and a gf3 ti 200.(im having second thoughts of doubling my ram)
will this be enough for playing games of today and to next year.playing them at max details flawlessly?wat do u think of doubling my ram will it help the performance a lot?thanks

[mjc]

Well what OS will you be running?

If it is 9x then doubling your RAM may be inviting trouble...at 512MB Win9x pukes (anywhere from a little below to a little above mainly depending on AGP configuration)...

Also going from 667MHZ to 1 GHz won't be all that impressive as it sounds...basically unless you double (and once you approach or break the 1GHz mark it is even less noticeable0 the speed of your current processor any speed gains due to it alone are probably just noticeable by benchmarking programs. Now if you were getting other features, like more L2 Cache or extra instructions then there may be a difference.

That said if your current motherboard supports 133MHz bus speed chips and you are running PC133 RAM then going to a processor that uses the 133 bus may show some marked improvements..mainly because the memory will be running faster, not the chip. The same holds true if the 667MHz chip you are running is on a 66MHz bus (and your board supports a 100Mhz bus speed).and going from 66 to 133 will show th most change, but you will also have to make sure that your memory is able to run at that speed....(PC133 RAM required)


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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[Ghost_Hacker]

My 2 cents.....

It seems to me that ever since games became "3D" that processor upgrades haven't made a big improvement in gaming performance for me. But I always notice an improvement in gaming performance whenever I upgrade the video card.


IMHO upgrading to the latest video card is more important to "keeping up" with the new games than anything else.


Have fun http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

[BigBlue66]

Yep, I agree with GH. That GF3 Ti 200 you're planning to get will make the most difference. But in case you don't like it, you can send it my way. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

OK, so here we go again with this >512mb RAM Windows mystery. I have 1 gig of PC133 running with a PNY Verto GeForce2 Ti AGP video board and have my AGP Aperture set to 128mb (twice my vid card's memory) and the only tweak I had to make was under the [vcache] section of the system.ini file. I limited the MaxFileCache to 512mb. I didn't even include a line to specify the minimum file cache.

The only other tweaks I've made have been to force phsycical memory usage and setting a fixed size swap file.

Cheers,

BB 66

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This space reserved for highly intelligent observations and witty remarks.

"Once I thought I made a mistake, but turns out it was the other guy."
Myself

[mjc]

Dang, BB, you have to be one of the 1% that has the "magic version" of 98...you are right, though, not in all cases will it be a problem, just a lot of the time and it is fixable. (I've been a bit of a doom and gloomer latley, Huh?)

I also thought I had included something about the vid card being where you would notice the most improvement....oh well, but I agree with GH and BB on that point entirely...if you really want to see improvement, the video card will be the place to put your money.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[mccoy26]

Originally posted by mjc:
Dang, BB, you have to be one of the 1% that has the "magic version" of 98...you are right, though, not in all cases will it be a problem, just a lot of the time and it is fixable. (I've been a bit of a doom and gloomer latley, Huh?)

I also thought I had included something about the vid card being where you would notice the most improvement....oh well, but I agree with GH and BB on that point entirely...if you really want to see improvement, the video card will be the place to put your money.



so in short just upgrade my video card and just retain my p3667 mhz and just upgrade later to an athlon xp or p4 northwood(which im planning to have later)?by the way i use win me.

[mjc]

In a nutshell....yep, go with the video card, save a few $$ now and go for the big one later.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[BigBlue66]

Originally posted by mjc:
(I've been a bit of a doom and gloomer latley, Huh?)


Um, yeppers. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

But seriously, people shouldn't get scared of having more than 512mb of RAM. As everyone can see, it's something that can be worked around. The real key here is to modify those startup files before the actual installation of the memory. That will ward off any problems before they have a chance to surface.

So now you're probably all wondering what the heck I have so much RAM for when I'm just running 98SE. Well, fixin to upgrade the ole OS here one of these days and I hear tell that the newer Windas flavors handle lots of memory just fine.

Cheers,

BB 66


------------------
This space reserved for highly intelligent observations and witty remarks.

"Once I thought I made a mistake, but turns out it was the other guy."
Myself