rec.autos.simulators

i am considering buying a 450 amd chip to replace my slow cyrix chip for
playing GPL (i cant aford the an iquivelent P2 or a P3 and have no chance of
saving anymore money (i want to upgrade before i go to college as i dont
want to loose any work in the neccesary format that will have to be done)
is it well worth it?
cheapest -place to buy the chip, motherboard and a new hdd in the uk?
would i be advised to wait a few weeks until the AMD athlons are more
available and buy a K6-3 in the price crash?
i wil;l have to use my 64 mb's of simm memory (as i cant afford to buy dimms
as well) are dimms much faster (and they are needed for any intel chips)
would they gbe a worth while investment in the future after ive upgraded my
CPU.

rubinio

Just whatever you do, don't get a cheap un-branded motherboard. When I first
got my K6-2 300, I got a Topelite Super 7 board (yeah, I hadn't heard of
them either...) based on the ALi V chipset for about 50. I was distinctly
unimpressed by the performance advantage over my old P166MMX Overdrive in
some programs and games. There also appeared to be no web-site to get BIOS
upgrades from (even the retailer didn't have one on file).
Eventually I bit the bullet and bought an Asus P5-A for about 70. Despite
having the exact same chipset, my performance in Quake 2 went up by 30%
(yes, THIRTY!)

I would personally say, if you can afford it, get a K6-x now, with a view to
going to an Athlon in Q2 next year, when maybe even Athlon 7-800's will be
available at reasonable prices. (rumour has it that the Athlon 750 is slated
for release Q3-4 this year).

Just my tuppence worth....

Mike West
3DNow! UK: www.3dnow.freeserve.co.uk

P.S.  for CPU prices, see 3DNow! UK. I have an AMD chip price guide there.
It should be up to date within the next couple of days, and has links to
some of the cheaper retailers...

Best game - floating point performance per bank is the Intel Celeron - get a
400 or more and its'll run GPL really well. I have a celron 300A running at
450mhz ona BX motherboard and get the same performance as a PIII 450.
Current price of celeron 300's is probably only around NZD 150 = STG 50.00
but you have to ensure it is one that does overclock to 450mz stable.