What to upgrade Grafic Card or CPU?

Erf...well, if you get the Radeon 9500 pro, that's almost all of the $200. If you're motherboard is Socket A (not the slot A), you can upgrade safely to an Athlon 1.4Ghz Thunderbird. Maybe even an AXP with a bios flash. I'd reccomend splitting the money between an Athlon XP 1700+ tbredA and a Geforce4 ti4200.

Instead of Rdram, why not just merge 4 Sdram channels...

OR!~!! You can buy an Insane Asus n8x mobo and for xmas get a new CPU ...lol

This Community is like a Second Family!!

Ditto!


<i>It's your world kid!!!</i>

I personally Prefer >60FPS - 30FPS is <i>playable</i> but is visibly not <i>quite</i> smooth enough (for me anyway).

I would still say he'll be happier if he upgrades to a higher end GFX card than if he upgraded just the CPU.

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If I were him I'd be satisfied with AXP 1800+/1700+ and Radeon 8500, even the LE 64MB. I play Asheron's Call 2 and that game has lotsa visual goodies and really stresses your vidcard. The settings for the visuals are LOWEST, LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, VERY HIGH. The Asheron's Call 2 Configurator chose HIGH for my R8500 LE, that's pretty awesome. My friend however who has GF2GTS 64MB has been set to MEDIUM to LOW, kinda a bummer. HIGH and VERY HIGH settings aren't all different when it comes to visual quality so the R8500 LE did a good job

My system was:
AXP 1800+
R8500 LE
768mb PC2100 DDR RAM
Friend's system:
P4 1.8A GHz
GF2 GTS 64MB
512mb PC800 RDRAM

So I say upgrade both CPU and vidcard, should last you a year unless you wanna play with a fast system with visual goodies such as FSAA and Aniso on I say save up more for a better upgrade.

3DMark IS a video card tester, so a better video card SHOULD yield more benefit than a better processor. that said, i agree with you that a video card would help him more, and i really like the idea of the 1700+ WITH the ti 4200, but if he's going to be upgrading again in a few months, he'll probably just be replacing one of those parts again...
i say radeon 9500pro so that you can upgrade other stuff (processor PLUS ram) in the spring

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<A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq¬found=1&code=1" target="_new">mubla otohp eht ni ecaf ruoy teg</A>

I have some more benchies. Maybe it will help. Maybe it won't (but it surprised me).

I just downclocked my system to be inline with yours. It's now at 900 Mhz (9 * 100), memory is also at 100 Mhz and running conservative timings.

3DMark2001 (8500 @250/550) = 5214 (how does this compare with your GF2?)
3DMark2001 (@300/650) = 5384 (definitely CPU limited here)
UT2003 FlyBy (1024x768) = 62 FPS (vs. 101 FPS @1.5 Ghz)
UT2003 BotMatch = 22 FPS (vs 37 FPS @ 1.5 Ghz)

Recap

GF2 + Duron 1.0 ghz - 3400 3DMarks
GF2 + Athlon 1.5 ghz - 4200 3DMarks
8500 + Athlon 1.5 ghz - 7200 (8300 w/ OC) 3DMarks, 101 FPS Flyby, 37 FPS Botmatch
8500 + Athlon 900 Mhz - 5214 3DMarks, 62 FPS Flyby, 22 FPS Botmatch.

It still looks like a video card upgrade is the better choice based on my small example. However, an Athlon 900 definitely gives up a lot of performance vs a Athlon @ 1.5 ghz when something faster than a Geforce2 is used.


<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>

sweet baby jebus! 8Ghz for 10 bucks?! I want that!!


<font color=red> Remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question... just stupid people. </font color=red>

A videocard will help your games more than a CPU. I also prefer to get over 60 FPS. I was considering the overall performance of your system. If all you use it for is for games, I think that a video card would be better. I was just thinking that to stay within your budget, I would have gotten a little better CPU, then waited a little longer and gotten a better video card. I really like having boot times decrease and having other programs load and run faster that aren't dependant on your video card.

combining the GF4 Ti4200 with an AXP 1700+ would be a very nice upgrade and you could play your games fine at good frame rates. The other option is to get a 2100+ now and a Radeon 9500 pro later for not that much more money in the long run.

I just want to say that I was happy with my GeForce2 GTS... and you can always lower the resolution to 800x600 to get good frame rates with those games. I am happier with my GeForce4 Ti4200, but I think I would have been even happier with a Radeon 9500 Pro (they weren't out when I upgraded though)