New Upgrade

Too bad.
G-cube cards are not great, though some had good memory.
You are getting DDR-SDRAM not RDRam.
If possible get them to send the P4c 2.8 instead. The P4c is faster, cooler, and OCs better.

"Original system:
AMD Athlon 1800+, (some compatible mobo), 256mb SDRAM 100mhz, NVIDIA Geforce 2 MX/MX 400 32mb, 40gig hard drive, floppy, CD-RW"

I would have checked if the motherboard supports the Athlon XP 2400+ (2Ghz 266Mhz FSB, costs like 50$ and is still a good upgrade from what you have now).
Then I would get another 256 or 512megs of sdram (perhaps get it second hand for cheap?), finally topping it all out with a 9800pro (200$, will eat that poor 9600pro you ordered for breakfast). Cheaper and a lot faster in gaming oh well...
And BTW im pretty shure your RAM is 133Mhz...

"You should really see a big improvement in gaming. The 9600 pro is very good card. In fact if you just added that card and some more ram you would see a big improvemnt in gaming."

Yea his CPU is decent so just upping the RAM and a new GFX card will do wonders (in fact in 3d games your current rig with a 9800pro gfx card will be faster than that new comp with the 9600pro which is too GPU limited IMO for gaming).
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by amd on 07/02/04 00:41 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

For gaming, Athlon64 2800+ is a much better choice.

GecCube isn't a good brand for grphics card. Try getting Sapphire/Gigabyte card.

Even if you only upgrade your graphics card, you should see significant performance increase in gaming

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Yes there is, but even if, your PC should be running fine:

ATI has an awfull software team. You have a problem in a game, ATI launches a new driver, you install the new driver, the problem's gone, but new others emerge, that you didn't have with the old driver.I have a friend that was very pissed off by the GeForce4 MX serie and switched to ATI. He now has a R9600 SE. Every time I meet him he tells me of another problem. I recommended him Halo:Combat Evolved and guess what he told me: "In Win 98 I can't get a decent framerate and in Win XP I get an awfull quality". I have a GeForce2 MX400 Pro, but I can play halo with no problem.

And if you think ATI has got the lead, you're wrong, ATI is struggling to survive. It's not doing things like the GF4 MX serie, but worse. It's lying about it's products and it's attacking "competition's cards" in a very cheatfull manner. I've got all it takes to proove it. Read the "ATI's optimized texture filtering called into discussion". Sorry I don't have the link.

And don't worry. When you will upgrade again, I'm sure you'll get S939 PCI-E graphic card and will consult the forums prior to the final decision.

Whoa...lets get some things straight here!

You'll be happy with the system. The 9600 Pro is a good card, it'll play new games really well. Its no 9800 pro, but its the best sub £100 bang for the buck.
Prescotts run hot, but the board makers know this, and as long as you have a nice fan and heatsink, you'll be fine. Its a fast cpu so you'll see some good framerates.

Now that ATI stuff. No offense but if your friend bought a 9600 SE then what does he expect? Its an awful card! ATI do offer MX esque cards - the 9000 or 9200 are both low end, cheap options, and in fact both are faster than the MXs. Have you got a short memory? Because I seem to remember nvidia cheating a while ago now I'm not saying its ok to cheat, but its not unheard of and besides, I can't see the difference tbh. Again, not saying its right, but nvidia have also done it.

My next card will be an ATi 9700 Pro, and I certainly wouldnt be foolish enough to think an SE card would be very good.

XP2000, 512 ddr 2700ram, GF4 MX440, XP Pro

He got an SE card... that explains the lower-than-expected framerates. If you want decent quality with decent framerates, you should get the Pro or XT versions of the card.

Take a close look at the game running at his system and running on yours. I'll bet you'll notice a huge difference in terms of visual quality. That 9600SE is suffering because of all the eye candy DX9 cards are capable of displaying... your GeForce2 is a DX7 part. Which means no extra eye candy for you... which also means you'll get higher framerates. Tell your friend to turn down the detail level and he should get better framerates on that card.

Nope. You're wrong. ATi is so far ahead of nVidia they felt they didn't need to completely redesign a new GPU core ala nVidia and the NV40. When you're a market leader and not playing catch-up, you can afford to make such choices.

Apparently you've been living in a cave for the past year. nVidia cheated with the NV30, seeing as their performance wasn't up to snuff. ATi's cheating is on their new X-series of cards... cheating which doesn't affect image quality nearly as much as nVidia's cheating did.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

Looks like you lost a couple of fps, oh well.
Too bad you cant get the P4c. Spend a little on cross-ventilation, and you will be fine. (esp if you're not OCing). Same is true of the video card. It is a nice system, you will love it. Check first next time though, and it will be just a little better.
Truth be known, your new system will be better than most.