Video card, CPU speed and frame rate ?

[steady-kg200]

Hi there

I just want your opinions on what to do.  

My bord is a ZX (Pine), 128 meg (133),a celeron 333, with a Voodoo3 3000 (PCI) and I get about 30 Frame rate except in a Lancaster formation where it come down to about 6.  

I just bought a 2nd hand PIII 550 which is otw from Hawaii, it should be another 2 weeks to get here (Canada).

1st: What kind of frame rate could I expect from this future arrangement ?

2nd: Would a Gforce 2 DDR (32 meg) be worth it with the 550 ?

3rd: Should I dump the whole thing and get a new system ?

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STEADY
Major
KG200
KG200.com

[Skuzzy]

You did not mention if the GeForce is the MX or not, but in my testing of video cards and CPU combinations, I have found that a 600E PIII is not fast enough to drive the ATI Radeon to its full potential.
I am in the process of benchmarking the various GeForce cards with 4 different CPU's (600E, 800E, 800EB, 933EB) to find out the when the CPU is fast enough for any given resolution.  Also cross checking the AGP bus speeds to see if AGP4X and AGP4X Pro really buys anything over AGP2X.
Talk about complicated.
So far, the results have shown some interesting information.  Hint:  The higher the resolution, the less CPU you need.

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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[mason22]

skuzzy,

some interesting info for ya...

i have:

P3V4X
256meg PC133
PIII600E OC'd to 900mhz (150fsb)
Geforce2 ULTRA 64meg

ran 3dmark2000 with a score of ~7500

here's the somewhat interesting part...i had access to a PIII933 (slot1, and is NOT clock locked) for the night. Using the same setup as above (only now the 933 chip was installed) multiplier of 7.0 x 133fsb 1.75v.

3dmark200 score was ~7600 (i can't recall the exact numbers off the top of my head, but the first 2 digits are correct.)

all tests were done in AGP2X (AH locks up when in 4X mode, but 3dmark2000 WILL run through in 4X, i just didn't test it)

i know you are testing the cpus as is, no OCing. But i just wanted to throw some info at ya.

side note 2: Asus says that the P3V4X is for 733+ cpus. Since the 933 was not clock locked, and in the bios settings there was an option to set it at 866 (for auto mode). When i have my pIII600E in place i have the options of 400, 600, 800, or manual. I can only assume that if i had an 866 that the bios menu "should" show an option for it.

anyhow....can't wait to view your results on the testing! and a big thanks for knowledge and help!

[Skuzzy]

Without getting into a long desertation, the 3DMarks will always be effected by the speed of the CPU, but if you look at the FPS of the 2 game samples it runs, you might find it a bit interesting.  

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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp. http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net


[This message has been edited by Skuzzy (edited 02-07-2001).]

[bloom25]

I seriously doubt if AGP 4x will show a >2% performance increase until you get to maximum resolution and are pushing huge textures.

I had 4x running on my V770 Ultra for a while, but it made Internet Explorer lock up every couple hours(which then locked the system).  After I went to 2x I didn't notice any differences at 1024x768 32bit.



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS