Well, I couldnt take it anymore and had a long holiday weekend to pluck parts from the lumbering PC and stick it into the new AMD motherboard.
While there are some areas I am going to upgrade (hdd, video, ram, etc) here is what I have NOW and how its working...
MSI K7T Turbo2 MS-6330 V5.0 Motherboard
AMD XP 2000+ CPU
256mb PC133 RAM <--Adding more soon
13gb HDD (ATA 66) <--My Spare HD. ATA 100 soon!
Voodoo 5500 (2x CPU/64mb) <-- GeForce4 4400/4600 soon!
Internal ZIP Drive (100mb)
Sony CDR 20x/8x
PS/2 Key/Mouse
OnBoard Sound (on motherboard)
Linksys NIC
External USR 56k modem
17" KDS Monitor
Windows 2000 Professional
Now, this is an upgrade from a doggy P3 550. So, I know right off, some of you will see PC 133 ram and yell "Eek!". But, being in the midst of a move and kinda low on cash, I'm impressed how well this system works despite a slow hard drive and being a wee low on RAM.
In Aces High, I'm seeing 59/60 FPS with FSAA at X2 and 1024 x 768 resolution. More without it, but ask anyone with a V5500...FSAA just really makes everything look really really nice.
I'm tempted to keep Aces HIgh in 1280 x 1024...the gun counter looks goreous (i can read it!) but frames take a hit, dropping to mid 30s.
So, this system gets my by for a little while until I get the other pieces in. ATA 100 hard drive, GeForce card, more RAM, and hopefully DSL when I move (again!). I'm very interested to see what the FPS does when I kick in the GeForce 4.
Total cost of this upgrade : $300 ish... Motherboard was free (exchange for bad server motherboard), CPU, RAM, Floppy Drive and case. For that amount of money, I think I made out ok, on the cheap!
