rec.autos.simulators

Upgrade options advice please?

John Fryat

Upgrade options advice please?

by John Fryat » Thu, 19 Jul 2001 05:34:24

I am thinking of buying a new computer, which will likely have a
Matrox video card for their dual-head technology. I'm thinking
something like a 1GHz PIII or P4.
My exisiting machine is a PII/400 with a Matrox G200 and Voodoo 2

My question is, what setup would be best for running GPL, and other
things like GP3, Rall Championship (and MS Train Simulator)? It's ok
on my existing machine but I'd like to improve things. I can get 36fps
when running on my own, but with other cars I think things will slow
down a fair bit. Also I'd like to turn up the graphics a bit.

Options....

1. Run GPL etc on the new machine. Matrox G550, or whatever, not the
best for 3D as far as I understand it. (But is it good enough?)

2. Upgrade PII machine with a better video card. The point being, are
GPL etc. limited by the CPU power or the video card? Is PII/400 up to
it? What would be a good video card? Would a PII/400 with, say, a
GeForce video card 'max out' GPLs capabilities?

I don't really want to upgrade the m/board in the PII. Too much
messing about.

Thanks,  John

Nick

Upgrade options advice please?

by Nick » Fri, 20 Jul 2001 03:30:01

Look at it this way, my celeron 500 with 64mb ram (now 192mb) ran gpl fine,
and gp3, and quake 3 arena, and any other game you'd care to mention.

my graphics card is a Voodoo 3 3500 TV card (the fastest voodoo 3 board),
which includes tv functionality as well as video editing and many
s-video/composite inputs and outputs.

a 1ghz machine wouldn't even notice rally championship, and would scoff at
gpl in 1024x768. your p2/400 should be ok. how about check if your
motherboard can take a p3, and at what max mhz? look in the bios. i assume
the front side bus is at 100mhz, so the maximum mhz chip you can put in is
100 x clock multiplier (on your system this will be 4.0 at the moment). mine
goes up to 8.0 (800mhz). you might be able to buy a p3/800 and slot it
straight in.

mail me if you need any more info

Nick.


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