What to tweak?

Dempsey

I have an old machine Dell 233MHz with 192RAM and 4Mb STB Velocity Graphics Card.

I want to be able to run half life and its mods on a network at 800 x 600 (at least) and be playable.
At the moment it is at 680 x 480 and it is fairly difficult to play CS but i can manage at DOD because i'd choose a sniper, less movement.

What should I tweak, the CPU, Graphics Card or both. I am on a budget. I have looked at graphics gard via some of the links available here but I don't want to by a completely useless card that is as bad as the one i have.

I was looking at a Gainward AGP Riva TNT2 Vanta 16MB SDRam on www.komplett.ie, is it worth €46?

Gerry

The velocity is a real killer. What I would do is get the cheapest geforce2 mx possible, perhaps in buyandsell. The tnt is not worth €46, its a piece of crap IMHO.

if thats a pentium mmx 233, you won't be able to overclock it at all on a dell board, however if its a Pentium II 233, you may be able to clock it up with softfsb ( www.h-oda.com ) and choose the Intel AL440LX plugin.

Dempsey

Its a Pentium 2 with MMX. Is overclocking the best way to go or should i buy a celeron and a slotket adapter. Which is cheaper?

zAbbo

This could help as an upgrade :

http://pcirl.com/tutorials/archive/200502.asp

Dempsey

What is the essential diffence between AGP and PCI G/Card with respect to my machine?

P.S. http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=19105&t=476&l=1&AvdID=1&CatID=4&GrpID=9&s=pl Intel Slot 2 PIII Xeon 900MHz for EUR 5,904.22 excluding delivery, just the CPU!! Is this normal or are they f***ed in the head?

TacT

server cpu from intel = the expensive merchandise and it's not too badly priced either

saik

depseyt, thats like an uber cpu. a) it won't work on your board, b) it's for servers/vid editing.

I SAY: get yoself a geforce2mx.
I SAY: the difference between agp and pci is, rough rough estimate, 40% speed, pci is also more expensive. there is NO POINT in getting pci if you can use an agp. the pci is limited by the 33mhz/66mhz pci bus. *i've loosely tested this, on a gf2mx pci*, if you overclock the pci bus by x%, the perfomance goes up x%. grr....

get the geforce first, see how it goes, if it is not good enough.. overclock/get a celeron. if you need a new chip, dell motherboards aren't the most accommodating beasts so if you have to change motherboard, you may have to get new ram. ick.

saik

dempseyt even

did i do that to get 100 posts or not?

JustHalf

Originally posted by dempseyt
Its a Pentium 2 with MMX. Is overclocking the best way to go or should i buy a celeron and a slotket adapter. Which is cheaper?

Overclocking is cheaper as it is free, and the other isn't.

Dempsey

I know a Xeon won't work on my system but the fact that it's €5,500 and I see it other places (Xeon 2.2Ghz not 900MHz) for less than half the price at other web sites. I'd hate to be the fool that buys it for €5,500

Gerry

erm pcirl, the tutorial written by richie18 on your site is referring to upgrading a 100mhz fsb, bx slot 1 board, not a 66mhz lx PII board. You can get up to a celeron 733 for your board with the right adapter, however performance not be nearly as much as you expect because of the slow 66mhz bus.

zAbbo

I stand corrected but as you may agree it`s an interesting read nonetheless