Is it better to upgrade entire system

[Nomis1]

I have a Dell P3 550Meg machine which has 128 meg ram and a Voodo3Dfx video card.I enjoy gaming (Medal of Honour ,Diablo..)but have to run on the lowest resolution.Can I get away with buying a new video card-Gforce 3..or do I need a faster processor and more system ram?

[saphalline]

It depends on what Voodoo you're running, but I'll assume you've got a Voodoo3 because it fits the timeframe of the system and because you probably haven't replaced it yet. If you've got a Voodoo3, then yes an upgrade would help a whole lot. If you want to upgrade some of your other parts, well now it gets tricky.

For starters, a RAM upgrade might help, maybe another 256MB. This one is straight forward, but it depends on how much you want to spend.

Next up is the processor. Your PIII at 550MHz could be Slot1 or Socket370, do you happen to know? Slot1 procs are getting harder to find and the PIII in general is just enough behind the curve that it's rather expensive compared to its performance. Socket370 is desireable because of availability, but I'd say if you want a processor upgrade you'd be better off buying a Celeron. Sure a Celeron is "weak" compared to a PIII, but for the same price you can get a Celeron about 300MHz higher than a PIII. That should off-set any "weakness"!

Your upgrading options really depend on how much change you're willing to buy all at once. A GeForce3 would be a bit wasted on a PIII 550 with only 128MB of RAM, but if you plan to transfer it to your next computer, then go for it. After the vid card, a processor upgrade would increase your performance, but there's a lot of headaches there if you don't exactly know what you're doing. I'd say a GF3 and another 128 to 256MB of RAM is in order, and leave the rest alone. If you upgrade too much you may as well have gotten a new mobo & proc (P4 or AthlonXP) because a PIII/Celeron system doesn't have enough power to justify spending that much money on upgrading it. For gaming purposes, anyway.

Maybe in 6 to 18 more months you can afford to move up to a better system, and take that GF3 with you! The RAM won't make the move, tho, so maybe just buy only 128MB more, if any.

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"No, we do not gnaw on our kitty." - Dr. Evil

[joea64]

Personally, I would always go with increasing the amount of system RAM first. This would have been much cheaper last fall - I'm _very_ glad I took the opportunity when it was there and put a whopping 512MB on my system for $60 (though I then had the delightful experience of convincing Windows 98 not to use it all for file cache!), but if you do smart shopping, especially using Pricewatch, you should still be able to get plenty of RAM for a very reasonable price. If you're running WinXP, or planning to, you definitely need to have more than 128MB, I would say, to be able to run your applications comfortably.

As to CPU's, I would respectfully disagree with Saphalline here. If you have the money to get a Socket A/462 motherboard, get a high-end (say 1.2 GHz) Duron - they're significantly better performers than the Celeron. Of course, AMD CPU's are notorious heat producers, so you WANT to make sure you have adequate, or better than adequate, cooling, not to mention an up-to-date power supply. (You may well want to upgrade your power supply anyway even if you stick with Intel.)

BTW, my Duron 800/TNT2/512MB system does pretty darn well for the kind of gaming _I_ prefer....map-based strategy games. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif (First-person shooters give me terrible cases of vertigo. :P )

-Joe-

-Joe-

Originally posted by saphalline:
It depends on what Voodoo you're running, but I'll assume you've got a Voodoo3 because it fits the timeframe of the system and because you probably haven't replaced it yet. If you've got a Voodoo3, then yes an upgrade would help a whole lot. If you want to upgrade some of your other parts, well now it gets tricky.

For starters, a RAM upgrade might help, maybe another 256MB. This one is straight forward, but it depends on how much you want to spend.

Next up is the processor. Your PIII at 550MHz could be Slot1 or Socket370, do you happen to know? Slot1 procs are getting harder to find and the PIII in general is just enough behind the curve that it's rather expensive compared to its performance. Socket370 is desireable because of availability, but I'd say if you want a processor upgrade you'd be better off buying a Celeron. Sure a Celeron is "weak" compared to a PIII, but for the same price you can get a Celeron about 300MHz higher than a PIII. That should off-set any "weakness"!

Your upgrading options really depend on how much change you're willing to buy all at once. A GeForce3 would be a bit wasted on a PIII 550 with only 128MB of RAM, but if you plan to transfer it to your next computer, then go for it. After the vid card, a processor upgrade would increase your performance, but there's a lot of headaches there if you don't exactly know what you're doing. I'd say a GF3 and another 128 to 256MB of RAM is in order, and leave the rest alone. If you upgrade too much you may as well have gotten a new mobo & proc (P4 or AthlonXP) because a PIII/Celeron system doesn't have enough power to justify spending that much money on upgrading it. For gaming purposes, anyway.

Maybe in 6 to 18 more months you can afford to move up to a better system, and take that GF3 with you! The RAM won't make the move, tho, so maybe just buy only 128MB more, if any.





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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

[Davo186]

Hi, I think you should increase your ram to 256mb for a start.
Then maybe look at a Geforce 4 64mb V/Card do it in small stages.
Also tell Dawn you need a better performing video card, its a must for
Medal of Honor.