rec.autos.simulators

I know this is the wrong place but any help appreciated.
My System is Pent3 450 clocked to 550 and a voodoo3
I have 200 to spend would it be better spent on a 850 proccessor or a
Geforce2,or buy a cheap g force mx for 80 and see where the market goes
in the following months. I play all sorts of games 3d intesive and not.

Personally, I would go with the 850 and here is why.

I have a T-Bird 900 with a V3-3000 (sounds similar to what you would have if
you upgraded from the 450 to a 850) and I can even play N4 with 50-60 fps.

This will also allow you to use the speed difference of your processor for
other things as well besides games.

I forgot to mention i have 192 meg ram this seems fine!

you should have bought AMD from the start but anyway....

provided your ram is more than enough you should effectively concentrate on
the video, get a prophet II mx because if your video is weak you can get a
pentium 6 running at 5 gigs the bottleneck will be there all the time.

Think of it like when you buy car audio, if you buy a 300 W stereo system
it's better to buy 500W loudspeakers to always be able to get the max out of
the system, well same, you always want to get the max out of the system, not
being blocked by your video card.

  My path for upgrade is always....
cpu first...get as fast a chip as you can afford
vid card next...these change so much if you invest too much
in one it will be obsolete long before you can afford to upgrade again.
memory if needed..
harddrive
soundcard
cdrom
  Each item except the last has the "potential" to slow down your system.
The only reason I put hard drive above the soundcard is because you'll
probably fill a drive up and NEED another.  Sound cards seem benign, but an
older card with out of date drivers can bring down fancy cpus and video
cards.
  Good luck..have fun
dave henrie

I think a PIII 800, if your system will take it, would be the best overall
upgrade at this point.

The V3, while not state of the art, will get you by in most games.

-Larry

Go with the CPU.