rec.autos.simulators

1.  Would this be a worthwhile upgrade as far as racing sims go?
(Present cost is about $180 at newegg.com)  I'm using a Radeon 8500LE
vidcard.
2.  From what I know, the highest CPU that my mobo can take would be an
Athlon 2600XP (266 FSB) but they are expensive and hard to find.  (All I
find are 333 FSB versions).  So would the 2400 be a good choice?

I figure that this upgrade should be simple, and I'm hoping to get the
most bang for my buck.

Thanks!

Bert

Just beware that your Vid card is reaching it's limits, I recently
upgraded from an XP2200 to an XP2600 (333) and hardly got any increase
in my FPS or my 3DMark score despite the fact that my R8500LE is heavily
OC'ed

Running the card at 310/310 I scored 9300 (ish) with the 2200 and 9900
(ish) with the 2600, you'd be surprised how hard I've been trying to
break 10k....or maybe not :-), so an 18% increase in CPU power and a 25%
increase in FSB speed gave me a 6,5% increase in video performance, I
can't remember the FPS increase in NR2002, but it was more or less the
same increase

However, upgrading the CPU before the vid card is always a good choice
unless your vid card is really old and you have a lesser CPU than I had

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

Hmm..... My R8500LE only overclocks to about 285/285 reliably.  With my
XP1700, my 3D Mark score is about 8400-8500.  It sounds like I can probably
expect a score of about 9300 if I go with the 2400XP (assuming it would equate
to your 2200XP at 310/310).  That's only a 10% increase or so......   So maybe
it wouldn't be worthwhile after all.

Furthermore, 8500 is a pretty decent score in itself, my "work" PC
"only" score about 7500 and that's an XP 2000, but I know that's because
of a slow MoBo, it's an "ancient" ASUS A7M266 (AMD 761) which I love to
death for it's reliability, but as DDR based MoBo's go, it's slooow :-),
still, it suggests that your system is well tuned

In my opinion, the R8500 is an excellent choice for a sub 2000 (ish) CPU
and goes nicely hand in hand with the one you've got, nice balance, and
like I said, unless you have a "shitty" vid card, which you don't, the
CPU is the first thing to upgrade, I was merely hinting that you may
also want to look at a new vid card in the not too distant future as
well

I'm pleased with my upgrade so far, don't have much time for ***
these days, but the new CPU will be accompanied by a R9x00 of some sorts
in the near future, the CPU upgrade happened now as I had a buyer for my
old CPU, the cost of the holiday season prevented the video card from
joining it right now :-)

And yes, I've been extremely pleased with the OC'ing potential of this
card, I've got two others as well, 64 MB as opposed to the 128 in my
*** PC and they don't OC nearly as well, 275 and 285 respectively,
but I'm not 100% sure if that's all down to the vid card itself as I
tried one of the 64 MB cards in my *** PC and it OC'ed better there
and I wonder if the AGP port on the different MoBo's might have
something to do with it

I haven't looked into it much as I'm not *that* interested in OC'ing
anymore :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--