Feasible upgrade?

[MellowYellow]

Hi all,
I was hoping to get some informed opinions from the community. I am currently using a 32M DDR Radeon on my system which consists of an ancient ASUS P3B-F mobo (BX chipset) with a 500 MHz Slot 1 PIII.
I am currently looking into getting a new vid card to upgrade my gaming performance, but I'm not sure if I'll be bottlenecked by my aging CPU. The card I am looking at is the MSI StarForce 831 (using the GeForce2Pro chipset) because it is the most cost effective GF2 (non-MX) card I can find and I don't wanna spend a small fortune on an aging system. Any opinions on whether or not my purchase is justified? Should I switch to an MX-400 solution since I don't have a blazing fast system? Any thoughts would be helpful. Thanks.

 

[starwrs3]

i would stay with your radeon card cause its performance can match if not beat the starforce 831 card

 

[arsend]

You would probably see a greater increase if you upgraded your CPU, which for you setup now, is the main bottleneck.

If it works for you then don't fix it.

 

[MellowYellow]

Thanks for the advice so far. I'd upgrade my CPU if I could but unfortunately I have the first generation P3's with the slot 1 architecture. So unless I get a new CPU/mobo combo, upgrading is not an option.

If the CPU is the bottleneck, then maybe I'll just wait until I get a new system.

 

[phsstpok]

Here is how you can check to see if your system is limited by CPU or video card.

Choose a good benchmarking game. Quake 3 Arena is the classic. Set the detail level to the minimums and resolution really low as well. Quake 3 goes down to 320x240 but you probably don't need to get that low. Check the framerates. This will pretty much give you the maximum framerates that your system can produce with the game (but obviously you are not going play at LOD that you see). Now start increasing the resolution without changing the LOD, level of detail, and retest. Normally, as the resolution goes up the framerates go down.

If you reach some resolution where framerates do not drop vs the previous test, that is they level off, then you know that the CPU is the limiting factor.

If the framerates just start to level off at your prefered resolution for game play then your video card is pretty good match for your CPU.

If the framerates never level off (and don't look like they are going to) then your CPU is very well capable of keeping up with you video card and, in a sense, the video card is slowing thing down.

For example, on my old K6-2 system, at 400mhz, with my Geforce256 SDR card I got about 40 frames per second at 320x240 using the test described above. At all other resolutions above that I got about 24 fps. That's from 512x384 to 1280x1024 I got 24 fps. (Overclocking the video card did nothing to improve this because the CPU is the limiting factor).

I now use that very same video card in my Duron system at 1007mhz. With the video card overclocked it does 74 fps at 1024x768 with max details (about 54 fps stock). At the minimum resolution and LOD it does about 148 fps which indicates my Duron's limitations. However, you can see that my Geforce256 SDR was not the limiting factor in my original system.

Your Radeon DDR even stock should be a match for my Geforce SDR. I would say that your P3-500 is limiting you and not the Radeon. In fact, your Radeon has plenty of headroom.

I don't think you would see any improvement by changing video cards.

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[njeske]

The highest processor speed that Asus reports your motherboard to support is 850MHz PIII. That would be a 70% increase over your current 500MHz. Just doing that will help you see a huge increase in system performance. Current price for a 850MHz Slot 1 PIII is $134 (Pricewatch.com). The price for the StarForce 831 is $124. For the extra $10, I think you will notice much more of an increase with the processor upgrade than you will with the graphics card. I currently use the ATI Radeon 32DDR on a T-Bird 1.13GHz system and it works great.

Go for the CPU.


- <font color=red> God </font color=red> <font color=white> Bless </font color=white> <font color=blue> America </font color=blue>

 

[njeske]

Just another side note.... Make sure you get the 100MHz version. I couldn't find info on wether your board supports the 133MHz bus or not, so unless you can find the info, don't risk it.


- <font color=red> God </font color=red> <font color=white> Bless </font color=white> <font color=blue> America </font color=blue>

 

[flamethrower205]

Actually, getting the pro would make performance better. The radeons in all fairness don't give u as good perfromance (FPS).

Your brain: PC
You brain on drugs: Mac

 

[njeske]

If he already had an 850MHz processor, I would totally agree with that. But for his current setup, he will benefit more from a CPU upgrade than from a video card upgrade. If he only had a 8MB Trident card or something I would definitely say upgrade the video, but not in this case.

- <font color=red> God </font color=red> <font color=white> Bless </font color=white> <font color=blue> America </font color=blue>