New chip or Graphics card?

[hachiman]

Hi

I have

win xp
512 mb ram
900 mhz athlon tbird
geforce 2 mx

Tomorrow i am gonna buy either a

geforce 4 mx (yes i know it's not the full monty'but will it do a better job than my geforce 2 mx)
Or a geforce 3 t1200
or a 1.4ghz chip

Or a combination

Budget is an issue

the geforce 4 is £95
geforce 3 is £150
1.4 ghz is £99

Budget is £250 at a stretch .
But if i get the gf4mx and the chip it's only £200.

Advice appreciated

 

[Guest]

You will see a bigger performance increase if you switch to a better graphics card. The GF4MX and GF3Ti200 are more or less equivalent. They will swap places in performance rankings depending on the test. Personally I went with a GF3Ti200. It has a good bit of headroom for such an inexpensive card. Radeon 8500 is getting cheap though. I'd definitely check out that option.

My best friend runs a GF2MX400 like you have now with an AMDXP1800+. His 3dMark scores are ~2500. I tested my system with a PII Celeron 400Mhz with the GF3Ti200 and scored 3055. On the cpu intensive portions of the benchmark his framerates were higher, but other than that the slow cpu with better graphics was on top. With a 900Mhz Tbird I would expect to see over 5000 with a GF3Ti200.

 

[phsstpok]

For just a video card upgrade the Geforce3 is the better choice by far.

On the otherhand a CPU <b>AND</b> video card upgrade will give you better performance in everything. Not sure if the combo will match the performance of the Geforce3.

You have to ask yourself some questions. If you plan on using 1600x1024 resolution then it's the Geforce 3. If you only use 1024x758 or possibly 1280x1024 and would like to use FSAA, the Geforce4 MX might be good enough, and you still have that added performance of the 1.4 ghz CPU. (I hope you are talking about a MX440, or even better an MX460. The MX420 is NOT much better than the Geforce2 MX).

One last thing though, a Geforce3 and the 1.4 CPU fall within the budget you listed by 1 pound. This would be the best choice.

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 03/25/02 04:06 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[AMD_Man]

Forget the GF4MX. It will become obsolete very soon as it has no hardware DX8 support. Get a GF3Ti200 and a 1.4GHz Athlon and you'll see a huge performance boost.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor