rec.autos.simulators

 I'm looking to upgrade the following system for the purpose of
getting better performances in my games:

Athlon Thunderbird 900mhz
Soyo MB K7vtapro
512mb PC 133 sdram  (cas3)
60gb IBM Desktar HD
ATI Radeon 7500

Will I see any increase if I first upgrade the cpu for an Athlon XP
1600 or 1800+ ? I'd like to be able to have good perfs at 1024X768

Is there a significant speed boost if I chage the mobo and the ram to
get a kt333 system with ddr memory ?

Is the Radeon 7500 simply outdated for these kind of games (Or is the
CPU a bottleneck for the card) ?

Finally, do you know a site that compares the performance differences
of different Athlon configurations ?

Thanks a lot!
Alain

   I've always felt the single biggest increase comes from doubling your
CPU.   Next the video card, then memory, subsystems, and finally the
motherboard.
  You just can't beat raw power.  AMD 2000+ are becomming fairly prevalent,
You could swap your video card for  a newer video card, but it would be
wasting some of it's power waiting for the cpu to send it more graphic info.
Your hard drive is already good and that wouldn't affect most ***
situations.  Memory, going from pc133 to  333 level stuff just won't be
noticable...usually what you see with memory is the lower threshold in more
easily seen...i.e. the point where your system begins to choke...it won't
seem much faster on the top end...it just will keep running smoother where
in the past, with slower memory, you would have see slowdowns on the screen.
  So if your motherboard bios can support newer chips...go for as MUCH cpu
as you can afford.
It's the single greatest factor on framerate. (unless you have such a
stinker vid card that your whole video subsystem is outdated..)  The 7500
ain't the fastest dog but it ain' t the slowest either...avoid high
resolutions and it will last a-bit longer...
Whatever you do, don't exceed 512 meg of Ram if you have Win9x.(it's not a
huge proble, there are even workarounds, but you are essentially wasting
money that could be spent on cpu power.)
dave henrie

MadDAWG

ciao!
Alain