Upgrade question

Hi all;

Have been considering doing an upgrade to my entire system recently, but am hoping to delay it one year due to financial reasons. I presently have:

T-Bird 1.0 ghz
512 mg sdram
Geforce Gts 2 32 mg ddr
SB Audigy
10 Gb 5400 rpm HD (will be upgrading)
Windows 98

I have 2 questions. First I will be upgrading to a 7200 rpm 80 gb hd in the near future(running out of space). I was going to do the entire CPU and video card because I have been noticing some frame rate slowdowns with some games. However, in most instances I meet the recommended requirements with the exception of the video card. I also understand the GEForce 4's are optimized for a cpu that runs much faster than mine. I dont want to spend top dollar until I do the upgrade...esp if my present system will never see the full benefit of the GeForce 4. So here are my questions:

1/ Hard drives. A friend of mine told me that WIN98 will only recognize the first 25 gb of a hard drive. Thus making an 80 GB purchase useless. Is this true?

2/ Would I notice less bottle necking in my present system if I were to purchase a GEforce 3 with 128 mgs ram on it? ie would a video card upgrade reduce the frame rate hits that i periodically see? If so, which card is the recommended one.

Hoping for some help on this one folks. Thanks for any and all replies.

Tango

1 - Even if your bios has trouble recognizing the drive, which I doubt, any drive you buy should come with software that updates your system in the even that it can't recognize the size. Secondly, check the manufacturer's site for your mobo and see if there's a bios update/flash utility. Make sure you follow the directions <i>exactly</i> when flashing your bios. This should update it to current standards.

2 - Currently the biggest bottleneck with any system is the graphics card. That being said, you should definitely upgrade your GC first and see what kind of results you get. A faster CPU always helps, but since most game are becoming more GPU-dependent and less CPU-dependent, a new card would be your best bet. The Radeon 8500LE is a great card for the price and can easily be overclocked up to and beyond the base 8500 clock/memory speeds.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Greeny on 10/07/02 01:15 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

I ran an 80GB drive on Windows 95, and Windows 98 is newer still! Your friend is stupid.

A graphics card upgrade usually gives more gaming improvements than a CPU upgrade

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