I'm wondering which element of my system to upgrade to improve performance. I have:
G400 16MB SH vanilla
500 Mhz Celeron @66
Epox LX Motherboard, 66MHz only
192 MB 66MHz SDRAM
SBLive running APSLive drivers
6 GIG IDE system drive
4 GIG SCSI
And a limited budget ! ( Say, £150 max )
The limitations I am seeing at the moment are in games like System Shock, Thief 2 and Deus Ex - all of which have dodgy engines, I know, but the symptoms seem likely to be related to my system. ( And a few more FPS in Q3 are always welcome, anyway ;-) However I also use my PC for music, so if I could get a general improvement in system performance while I'm at it...
So, given that I can't justify an entirely new setup, what should I change first ? A new motherboard would allow a faster FSB speed, but I'd have to buy new RAM to cope, hence going over-budget. I could get a 766 Celeron, but maybe the rest is holding me back too much for this to be worth it ? Plus a Duron would give me better bang for my quid. Reducing my RAM latency from 3 to 2 in the Bios gives a nice boost to performance, but I start getting instability, which doesn't go down well with the family, so maybe I should just buy 128MB of PC133 memory and solve that ? Maybe a new hard disc ? It'll make everything seem smoother, and the space would be nice, but probably won't help much with games performance.
Or... sharp intake of breath - should I get a GeForce 2 MX ? Nice for games but no improvement at all in the overall system performance.
Any opinions about which of these will be most satisfying for the outlay ?
Tones
G400 16MB SH vanilla
500 Mhz Celeron @66
Epox LX Motherboard, 66MHz only
192 MB 66MHz SDRAM
SBLive running APSLive drivers
6 GIG IDE system drive
4 GIG SCSI
And a limited budget ! ( Say, £150 max )
The limitations I am seeing at the moment are in games like System Shock, Thief 2 and Deus Ex - all of which have dodgy engines, I know, but the symptoms seem likely to be related to my system. ( And a few more FPS in Q3 are always welcome, anyway ;-) However I also use my PC for music, so if I could get a general improvement in system performance while I'm at it...
So, given that I can't justify an entirely new setup, what should I change first ? A new motherboard would allow a faster FSB speed, but I'd have to buy new RAM to cope, hence going over-budget. I could get a 766 Celeron, but maybe the rest is holding me back too much for this to be worth it ? Plus a Duron would give me better bang for my quid. Reducing my RAM latency from 3 to 2 in the Bios gives a nice boost to performance, but I start getting instability, which doesn't go down well with the family, so maybe I should just buy 128MB of PC133 memory and solve that ? Maybe a new hard disc ? It'll make everything seem smoother, and the space would be nice, but probably won't help much with games performance.
Or... sharp intake of breath - should I get a GeForce 2 MX ? Nice for games but no improvement at all in the overall system performance.
Any opinions about which of these will be most satisfying for the outlay ?
Tones
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