I'm Still Confused. One Last Question...

G

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Ok everyone, I have read the article from Tomshardware.com about the bottle-necking of the CPU or the Video card. It is very obvious from that article that the author is much more in favor of the video card upgrade first, then the processor upgrade second. He says, "Spending a lot of money for a fast processor is more of a status symbol rather than a clever purchase." He also says, "If you belong to the group of those users who want best 3D performance, you should set highest value on the graphics card." His last statement is this, "As of late, new-generation 3D-chips offer significantly larger performance gains than new microprocessors."

I have a Dell Dimension XPS R350, with PII 350, 128 SDRAM, and a 32 MB Diamond Viper V770 Ultra. YES YES YES I am definitely going to upgrade the processor, BUT BUT BUT, I only have a limited supply of cash right now. And after reading many peoples helpful responses, both here and at the Dell forums, the majority of people say to get the Video Card first. The GeForce 2 64 MB DDR Ultra.

OK. Now my only thought is this.....It's obvious now to me that my Video card is OLD. That's cool, I can handle that. But I still thought that my processor was more out of date than my Video Card. I go to the stores and look at all these new kick ass games and I'm finding more and more of them are telling me that my PII 350 is just not going to cut it with these games. But they do say (most of them) that my Video Card, although it is old and crappy, is still doable with these games.

So, is my $250 that I can spend right now, going to the 1 Ghz processor or the GeForce 2 Video card???? I'm hoping to upgrade either the Card or the processor (which ever one I don't get) in about 3-5 months from now. I'm not made of money you know.

Please help me.

Thanks for everything.

Jack.
 

bighead111

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Jan 22, 2001
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Upgrade you CPU and put another 128MB ram. Mine is using Matrox G400MAX card, guess as same lever of yours, but I upgraded the CPU to 1Ghz, alot different. Your CUP will be bottleneck even you put a GeForce 3. What Tom meant is if you have reasonable speed CPU, e.g. 600MHz or 700Mhz, you should consider upgrade the VGA card rather than going for Higher speed CPU, but in your case, CPU should be your priority.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by bighead111 on 05/18/01 12:00 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

lagger

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Jan 19, 2001
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I have to hope \ recommend you are upgrading theMobo too ... the gf2's and 3's all run best at 4x agp and I doubt your current mainboard is better than 2x

Lagger

<b><font color=blue>Never try to idiot proof anything..God will always make a better Idiot </b> </font color=blue>