AMD K-6 450 MhZ too slow?

I have a Compaq 5360:
AMD K-6 450 MhZ with 384 megs of RAM

I know how to disable the onboard video, but I want to know if it is
worth trying a GEFORCE-2 MX400 card, or is my computer too slow to
make it run properly... I've heard some good things about the card,
but am worried my system is too slow...

Tim

"Tim" wrote in message
om...
I have a Compaq 5360:
AMD K-6 450 MhZ with 384 megs of RAM

I know how to disable the onboard video, but I want to know if it is
worth trying a GEFORCE-2 MX400 card, or is my computer too slow to
make it run properly... I've heard some good things about the card,
but am worried my system is too slow...

Tim

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/...rce2mx-13.html

--
Derek

On 25 Nov 2003 20:19:31 -0800, (Tim) wrote:

I have a Compaq 5360:
AMD K-6 450 MhZ with 384 megs of RAM

I know how to disable the onboard video, but I want to know if it is
worth trying a GEFORCE-2 MX400 card, or is my computer too slow to
make it run properly... I've heard some good things about the card,
but am worried my system is too slow...

It all depends on what you are expecting to run on it. You won't hear
anything good about cards with MX in the name by anyone who knows
anything about video cards.
--
Andrew. To email unscramble & remove spamtrap.
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevent text.
Check groups.google.com before asking a question.

(Tim) wrote in message . com...
I have a Compaq 5360:
AMD K-6 450 MhZ with 384 megs of RAM

I know how to disable the onboard video, but I want to know if it is
worth trying a GEFORCE-2 MX400 card, or is my computer too slow to
make it run properly... I've heard some good things about the card,
but am worried my system is too slow...

Tim

Depends on what you wish to run... mmm a K-6 is not the most stable
processor. Ah well, should do fine!

Your system is slow but the card is also slow, so a marriage made in
computerhell :-p

I know how to disable the onboard video, but I want to know if it is
worth trying a GEFORCE-2 MX400 card, or is my computer too slow to
make it run properly...

The K6 motherboards are all very bad by modern standards, and some of them
have AGP incompatibilities which might prevent the graphics card from
functioning properly. It is also a VERY slow CPU by todays' standards, so
you can't expect to run anything recent on it, or even from a couple years
ago, or you might get very frustrated.

I've heard some good things about the card,
but am worried my system is too slow...

Yeah, well, "some good things" maybe when the MX series was new several
years ago, but really, it was a budget chip then and it is definitely even
more of a budget chip now. If you haven't bought it yet, don't pay more than
like, $25, because that's about all it's worth today.

On 25 Nov 2003 20:19:31 -0800, (Tim) wrote:

I have a Compaq 5360:
AMD K-6 450 MhZ with 384 megs of RAM

I know how to disable the onboard video, but I want to know if it is
worth trying a GEFORCE-2 MX400 card, or is my computer too slow to
make it run properly... I've heard some good things about the card,
but am worried my system is too slow...

Consider this... hmmmmm

Back when UT-1 came out - late 1999 - 600Mhz CPUs were brand new.

But with a good video card (Voodoo3 or TNT2-Ultra) it ran fine in
1024x768 on a 600Mhz CPU... but anything slower - then 800x600
med-details.

A GF2-MX400 is faster than a Voodoo3...

But your 450Mhz AMD K6-2 is equal to a PII-300Mhz or Celeron 333Mhz...
if youre lucky... AMD was not GOOD for gaming until the AMD K7
Athlons hit the market.

Your best bet to play ANYTHING made in 1999 (very very old almost 5
years) and newer is a total system upgrade.

This is not to rip you, but every part of your system effects your
game play:

CPU
RAM (Speed and amount)
Hard Drive
Sound card
and of course the Video card.

But you can build a decent gaming and system rig for about $400~500,
not state of the art but good. You need a new case to go with the new
system as well.

If you want a parts list, ask.


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

Games like Quake 3, Unreal, Serious Sam should all run fine on that
machine

Serious sam? Very doubtful. Either one turns off ALL the eye candy or it's
Jerk City Here I Come!

Q3 is going to be very choppy with a few bots running around.

You might
even be able to get games like Wolfenstein and Medal of Honour to run at
low
resolutions...

I never played MoH, but Wolfenstein? Forget it. Even with vertex lighting
that game's going to chug so bad you wouldn't believe it. It's not the video
card that would be holding it back, but the super slow-ass CPU.

Somehow I doubt MoH is going to be one bit better, possibly WORSE.

"Lenny" wrote in message
...

Games like Quake 3, Unreal, Serious Sam should all run fine on that
machine

Serious sam? Very doubtful. Either one turns off ALL the eye candy or it's
Jerk City Here I Come!

Q3 is going to be very choppy with a few bots running around.

q3 is a 4 year old game - you under the impression that everyone had radeon
9700's and 2 Ghz machines back then? Serious Sam was quite well known when
it was released for running well on low end machines.

You might
even be able to get games like Wolfenstein and Medal of Honour to run at
low
resolutions...

I never played MoH, but Wolfenstein? Forget it. Even with vertex lighting
that game's going to chug so bad you wouldn't believe it. It's not the
video
card that would be holding it back, but the super slow-ass CPU.

Somehow I doubt MoH is going to be one bit better, possibly WORSE.

Having run *all* those games on a p3 550 with basically the same video card
a couple of years ago, I can tell you, from experience, they *will* run, and
reasonably smooth at that.

Dropping the resolution to 800 x 600 will do wonders for games like that.

Tom

Q3 is going to be very choppy with a few bots running around.

q3 is a 4 year old game - you under the impression that everyone had
radeon
9700's and 2 Ghz machines back then?

Unlike you, I have actually TESTED running Q3 on a system like the original
poster's, and trust me. The game runs just like I said!

The K6 series isn't a fast gaming CPU at all, no matter how high you clock
it.

Serious Sam was quite well known when
it was released for running well on low end machines.

"Low-end machines" is a pretty vague statement, SS is newer than Q3A, so a
low-end machine for SS might well have been an upper-mid-range machine for
Q3A, maybe even a high-end machine.

It's actually more demanding than Q3A, since it uses more advanced features
like shadow buffers, detail textures etc. You'd have to turn that all off to
get it to run anything near decent speed on a K6 machine.

Having run *all* those games on a p3 550 with basically the same video
card
a couple of years ago, I can tell you, from experience, they *will* run,
and
reasonably smooth at that.

A P3 550MHz is a lot Lot LOT faster than a K6 at 450! You simply don't know
what you're talking about, so no point arguing with me! Unless you've
actually tried it yourself you shouldn't even open your mouth on the
subject. And yes, I've run Wolf too on a system similar to the OP's, it is a
horrendous experience even at 640, low-res textures, vertex lighting.

Dropping the resolution to 800 x 600 will do wonders for games like that.

DUDE! Like I said, it's not a videocard thing. It's because of the slow K6-2
CPU with a rotten non-pipelined FPU, which also lacks on-die L2 cache btw,
and relies on a very slow 100MHz system bus, coupled to very slow memory and
AGP controllers. Memory bandwidth of a K6 system is maybe half that of a
comparable P2 system, and even less compared to a 133MHz P3 system.

You don't know what you're talking about. Like I said.

"Thomas" wrote in message . cable.rogers.com...
"Lenny" wrote in message
...

Games like Quake 3, Unreal, Serious Sam should all run fine on that
machine

Serious sam? Very doubtful. Either one turns off ALL the eye candy or it's
Jerk City Here I Come!

Q3 is going to be very choppy with a few bots running around.

q3 is a 4 year old game - you under the impression that everyone had radeon
9700's and 2 Ghz machines back then? Serious Sam was quite well known when
it was released for running well on low end machines.

You might
even be able to get games like Wolfenstein and Medal of Honour to run at
low
resolutions...

I never played MoH, but Wolfenstein? Forget it. Even with vertex lighting
that game's going to chug so bad you wouldn't believe it. It's not the
video
card that would be holding it back, but the super slow-ass CPU.

Somehow I doubt MoH is going to be one bit better, possibly WORSE.

Having run *all* those games on a p3 550 with basically the same video card
a couple of years ago, I can tell you, from experience, they *will* run, and
reasonably smooth at that.

Dropping the resolution to 800 x 600 will do wonders for games like that.

Tom

A k6-2 is not really a good processor... the P III might indeed have
some performance, the K6-2 hasn't!

Only from the K7 AMD finally caught the wind!

So performance seen the K6-2 450Mhz is like a 300Mhz Pentium ....