On Sat, 28 Jun 2003 22:12:47 GMT, "grendel"
wrote:

I need to replace my GF2 GTS cause I'm pretty sure it has a heat problem and
plus I'd like to upgrade for better 3D performance in games. I play the
following games. Half-Life and GTA3. GTA3 seems to be very demanding.
Although I do have only an 800 MHZ Athlon and 256 meg of RAM I assume the
slowdown I get in GTA3 is because of a lack of video card performance.
Anyway I'm debating the need for a DX9 video card. If there is not real need
for a Directx9 video card for another year or 2 then I might as well upgrade
to a GF4 ti 200. I'm still a little worried about ATI's drivers and the
stuttering problems I have heard about. I could get an ATI 9700 non pro for
$200 or a nice ti200 for $100.


I don't know whether GTA3 stresses the CPU or video card more, but "in
general" your Athlon 800 is very significantly slowing down gaming,
and while a faster card will improve gaming, the Athlon 800 will even
futher slow down the faster card, and then the PC133(?) memory will be
another bottleneck. For example, I'm testing out a system for
someone right now, in it is an o'c GF2GTS. Here's some semi-random
info to consider (note that this aren't "tweaked" systems, just
whatever performance was seen "randomly" without changing any settings
from previous values) (Celeron on 133MHz FSB/Mem PC133, Athlon XP on
DDR333 FSB/Mem DDR):

Processor Video Card 3DMark2001 Score
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Celeron @ 900MHz GF2GTS 2505
Celeron @ 1.2GHz GF2GTS 3224
Athlon XP2800 GF2GTS 5010
Celeron @ 1.2GHz GF3TI500 5240
Athlon XP2800 GF3TI500 9120


Now consider that your current Athlon is just "barely" faster than the
Celeron @ 900 (not a significant difference considering the
performance spread between those parts and today's CPUs & video
cards).

Of course the GF3TI500 is a fair percentage slower than the GF4TI4200,
and further slower than the Radeon 9700, but it does show a difference
(sorry but no faster video cards are sitting around unused here to be
available for testing). There are relevant graphs at Tom's Hardware
that show this even better, but also show how some games aren't very
dependant on the CPU:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...charts-02.html

Rather than consider only a single game like GTA3 you ought to
consider "all" games, performance averages/trends, since inevitably
you'll be playing something else sooner or later.

What I would do is first upgrade the motherboard, processor, memory,
since that's ultimately needed anyway, and will enhance performance at
everything. There would be large gains with even (currently-budget
priced) components like a first-generation nForce2 board plus Athlon
XP2000, then if the gaming is still too slow consider a GF4TI4200 or
if some time elapses, card prices change, reassess what's available.


Dave