Upgrading my old BH6/celeron 450a and need graphix advice

Bluehair

First post.... been away from scene for a good while but getting back into it...

I'm upgrading my old BH6/celeron 300a o/c to 450a with a handy slotkey/celeron 566 o/c to 850 in a few days. Its the cheapest means i've found without having to junk my old mobo or ram..... (bout £200 Irish)

Thing is i'm undecided on the GeForce card to upgrade my old TNT or go the whole hog and get the GeForce2GTS....

I don't know if the celeron 850 can push the GeForce2 enough to justify the extra expense (thought i know the GeForce2s limits lie more in bandwidth problems than anything else)

Anyone got an opinion on this?????

(also anyone know where in Dublin i can get one without being *completly* ripped off??.... EB seems to be the best bet?)

shank

Check out this article on Firinsquad before you buy, lots of good info for your setup
.

Blade

Thats exactly what I did, bought the 566 from the states when it was just out, ended up costing me 240 quid tho with the adapter and fan, though I was sure I saw it on dabs website for under 100 sterling only a week later! Where are you getting yours from and how much exactly as a matter of interest. One of the lads who got that chip wasn't able to get it to run at 850, think 800 was the most he got out of it. I got 876 though with a standard heatsink and fan and 100mhz RAM (1.65 Core v) I'm sure I could go higher with 133 ram and some better cooling.

I just have a TNT2 Ultra after moving from the TNT on the celeron @ 450 and I can tell you the TNT2 is well maxed out at 876 mhz, you really need something better, I think I'll be getting the normal Gforce DDR for now.

Blade

Gerry

I'd get the normal geforce ddr. The GTS is too expensive, and is limited by having the same ram as the normal geforce ddr. You can overclock the geforce anyway. I have one here, and its not completely maxed out on a 960 mhz p3 (at 800 * 600)

Bluehair

Skank; thanks for the link that was informative but left the reader to make up their own mind. I'm beginning to think i might just cough up the readies for the GeForce2GTS...

Any recommendations on where to buy?

Btw blade i'm buying the cpu from http://www.powercomputing.co.uk he sell the 566 guaranteed to 850 for £130 sterling... another 20 or so each for slotkey and cooler.

Chubby

Try http://www.ibuyer.net but the sites listed are all american and it'll tell you if a site do international sales. Wonder if there's a UK or EU equivalent to this.

Anyone know other places that sells the Celeron2 other than Powercomputing.co.uk? I actually contacted overclockers.co.uk, basically they said intel issued repeated warnings about celeron2 shortage which is why no UK site seems to have it in stock.

I might be ordering a 566 celeron2 soon with a geforce (leadtek winfast geforce ddr rev b) from http://www.neutronusa.com/ cause the chip is only 110 dollars there and it's one of the few sites that has that geforce. P&P will cost about 60 to 70 dollars though but I'll be splitting that with someone else so it's not too bad.

[This message has been edited by Chubby (edited 13-06-2000).]

Yossarian

Interesting article abouit overclocking the Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator 2. Managed to get it running at 2 Gigatexels per second.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1255


Stephen.

TinCool

Just to let you guys know, PC Peripherals in Stillorgan have Celeron 566s in Stock for £145 + vat. Not all that bad considering you dont have to whack on shipping costs or get stung with crappy exchange rates. I've ordered one, hopefully pick it up this evening.

Just got a reply back saying that they dont' have any in stock but they've ordered one from the US for me (for the same price). So if anyone's interested shoot a mail off to mairead@pcp.ie and she'll sort you out. They even delivery for an additional 10 beans. Not all that bad. Gives me a boost of 350 mhz for around £170 beans.

[This message has been edited by TinCool (edited 13-06-2000).]

Kali

thing about overclocking the geforce 2 is that unless you play quake3 at 1024X768 or higher at 32bit then there no way your going to notice any difference at all in performance.. and frying your card in the process.
hell makes sense to me

MiCr0

i've got a ge-force ddr and i can't tell any difference in performance between 800*600 and 1600*1200

Blade

My 566 as I said ended up costing me 240 quid because I got hit for 21% VAT (40 quid) by the courier when it arrived, this is the problem with buying things from the states, unless you tell them to slap 'returned for repairs' on the parcel or undervalue it so you at least pay less VAT but I didn't do that myself. Getting stuff from the UK has the obvious problem of the sterling ex. rate, the ideal place to buy from would be somewhere like Germany, not that I know of any places from Germany with online shopping for PC parts but I'm getting a load of stuff over for PC Satellite Net access and it's working out a good 30% less than from the UK.

Those tests done comparing the G-forces show that unless your intending running at high res of at least 1024x768 theres no point going for the G-force2, personally I run games at 640x online and max 800x offline so it's a waste of money for me forking out for a g-force2, dunno bout the rest of you.

Blade

shank

But the whole point of gettin these pimped out cards is to be able to play UT/Q3 at 1024+, I play UT @ 640 atm because I get a big hit on framerate on any larger res. If I got my hands on a Gforce 2 I wouldn't be playin less then 1024.

Yossarian

Provided you use proper cooling your not likly to damage the card.
so why not run your card at 1024X768,
or even better at 1600Xsplah at 40fps with 32bit colour, if i had the option i sure would

Stephen.

_CreeD_

A GTS isnt worth it....Its a great core but too little Memory bandwidth. So all those enice high resolutions it has the fill-raet for are going to be crippled by the RamSpeed.
You wont get the extra bang-for-your-buck that you should.
A Geforce is grand for 1024@32bit or 1280 depending on the game.

Bluehair

Thanks for the various opinions + links offered folks, just to keep ya'all up to date i've decided for the sake of a couple of extra months of future proofing i'm gonna for for the GeForce2 GTS.... should be picking up the Creative Labs one tomorrow... not as bad as i expected for £260