Trying to understand frame rates

[Flightwaves]

I love my 3D games. But my Voodoo 3000 just wasn't cutting it, so I upgraded to the nVidia GeForce 4, 440 MX with 64 megs of RAM. Now I'm really trying to get excellent frame rates for Unreal Tournament 2003, but I'm just not. Now, this thing is running on an older PIII 500 with 256 megs of RAM. So my question is, what's the real slowdown here? The CPU or the graphics card. If I had to upgrade ONE, which would be the smartest to upgrade?

Does the RAM on graphics card make the difference? I'm obviously no expert, and I see GeForce cards up in the upper $200 range, but I'm not really understanding the difference in the cards.

Ultimate, I want to just not worry about framerates again any time soon. Without going absolutely most expensive top of the line, what's the quickest way to 60+ FPS for Unreal Tournament and other such games. (The older Unreal Tournament runs beautifully, by the way...)

 

[speeduk]

Of all the cards you could of got you got one of the worst out there, but then again you only have a p500, so it probably wont help to have a better 3d card ne way. You say you dont want to worry about framerates again? then you need to upgrade the cpu to at least a 1700xp/ 2 gig p4 and then its worth getting a card like the radeon 8500 or ti4200 etc. Im sorry dude but a p500 just cant cut it with games like unreal 2003, and same goes for the geforce mx! Heres an example of framerates with some setups for you to draw your own conclusions:
Unreal 2003 1024x768 32bit
your mx 440 on a 1gig athlon: 45fps (not bad)
your mx 440 on a 2700xp : 45fps (see my point?)
a geforce 4 ti4200 on a 1gig athlon: 81fps
same but on a 2700: 120fps
Also a point, unreal 2003 needs 512mb of ram to function fully!

 

[RobD]

This is a reply from Spitfire x86 from another thread on a discussion about the merits of GF3 vs GF4MX440

) It's DirectX 8 compliant, has pixel and vetrex shader. Pixel shader will result in better visual effects and vertrex shader will minimize CPU usage. GeForce4 MX440 has none of them, so it's not DX8 compliant

2) GeForce4 MX440's fillrate is very poor. GeForce3 has better fillrate, so it will do better in higher resolutions.

3) GeForce3 is faster (fps wise) than GeForce4 MX440 in every gaming benchmark.

4) GeForce3 will be able to run 3 game tests in new 3DMark2003, and GeForce4 MX440 will be able to run only one game test, this shows technically how bad GeForce4 MX is. This is one reason of nVidia's bad words about 3DMark2003

4) 128 MB will make 0% difference in games with a GeForce4 MX440

For the latest games, and to get decent performance, both your CPU and GPU are the bottlenecks. Even if you whacked a R9700Pro in, your mobo and CPU will restrict it's performance.

Upgrading your mobo and CPU, even with the 440MX <i>should</i> improve your overall performance. Then it's time to upgrade your graphics card.

Got for maybe an nForce 2 mobo and say, an XP1800, and you'll be cooking. BUT, until you replace your MX, you'll never be competeing on equal terms. Sorry man, but you wasted you dough on that card.

 

[Flightwaves]

Thanks for all the responses. At least I only spent $90 on it!

I think my next move IS to just upgrade to a P4 and go with a ti4200 or something.

Thanks!