Seeking advice on PC upgrade ready for GP3 :)

Hi all, Sorry if this sort of question is asked a lot. With all these nice new games arriving (Rally Championship 2000, Mid-town Madness, F1-2000... and of course GP3 this month!), I recently took my PC up from a P-200MMX to a Celeron 500Mhz. I think the weak link in the system is probably now the graphics card set up. I have my original PCI bus 2Mb ATI Mach64 (I think that's what it is anyway), plus a PCI bus Voodoo-2 3DFX card (8Mb). Without spending a fortune (maybe up to �100 - �150), is there anything I can buy which will speed things up significantly graphically, or am I just as well keeping what I've got? Is an all-in-one Voodoo 3 card (ie. to replace my 2D and 3D cards with a single AGP card) going to be significantly quicker? With my old system, I was of course used to running GP2 with half the pretty options turned off, and I guess I won't mind too much doing the same with GP3... In fact it's almost ironic that with the release of GP3 a few weeks away, I can now for the first time run GP2 in SVGA mode with all the graphic options switched on :-) Incidentally, for those in the UK, Gamestreet (www.gamestreet.co.uk) are taking pre-orders for GP3 for just �20.99 (including postage). Quite a bargain I think. They provide a pretty good service, pre-orders I've placed in the past have always turned up in the mail on the day of release. Ta in advance, Steve.

Currently the best card out there is the GeForce 2 GTS, no doubt about it. The Voodoo5 5500 also is a very good and fast card but can't tip the raw speed of the GeForce 2 GTS. The Voodoo5 5500 however has better FSAA (Full Screen Anti Alliasing, which gets rid of rough lines) as the GeForce 2 GTS has. But both of these cards are veeery expensive, around 300-350 pound, I should know as I bought a Asus V7700 GeForce 2 GTS last week :) If you are looking for something in the 100-150 pound, (where is that stupid pound sign on my keyboard?) the Voodoo3 3500 or the TNT2 card which are pretty equal to eachother might be your best choise... The Matrox G400 also is a nice card also near the performance of the Voodoo3 and the TNT2. Another good card is the GeForce 1 or the GeForce 256 though I believe these are more in the 200-250 pound range. That's about all good cards out there... Make sure you go for a 3Dfx (Voodoo) or a NVIDIA (TNT and GeForce) card, don't settle for anything else except for maybe the Matrox G400.... -- Sjon Steve Smith <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:8jt4v9$3d6$[email hidden]... > Hi all, > > Sorry if this sort of question is asked a lot. > > With all these nice new games arriving (Rally Championship 2000, Mid-town > Madness, F1-2000... and of course GP3 this month!), I recently took my PCup

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> from a P-200MMX to a Celeron 500Mhz. > > I think the weak link in the system is probably now the graphics card set > up. I have my original PCI bus 2Mb ATI Mach64 (I think that's what it is > anyway), plus a PCI bus Voodoo-2 3DFX card (8Mb). > > Without spending a fortune (maybe up to �100 - �150), is there anything I > can buy which will speed things up significantly graphically, or am I just > as well keeping what I've got? Is an all-in-one Voodoo 3 card (ie. to > replace my 2D and 3D cards with a single AGP card) going to be

significantly > quicker? > > With my old system, I was of course used to running GP2 with half thepretty > options turned off, and I guess I won't mind too much doing the same with > GP3... In fact it's almost ironic that with the release of GP3 a few weeks > away, I can now for the first time run GP2 in SVGA mode with all thegraphic > options switched on :-) > > Incidentally, for those in the UK, Gamestreet (www.gamestreet.co.uk) are > taking pre-orders for GP3 for just �20.99 (including postage). Quite a > bargain I think. They provide a pretty good service, pre-orders I'veplaced

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> in the past have always turned up in the mail on the day of release. > > Ta in advance, > > Steve. > > >

I hate to do this, since there's nothing worse than finding out you've spent too much on something, but the V5 5500 AGP is �249 in PC World and �219 mail order from Insight in the UK and the Creative Labs GeForce 2 GTS is �216 from Insight and �269 from PC World (inc vat). Insight are based in the UK (well, the uk division is anyway) and 3 day delivery is free for orders over �150. Ordering from Inisght is web-based so you need a credit card (go to www.insight.com and click the uk flag). I know some of the other GeForce 2 GTS cards with tv-out are more expensive, but you shouldn't be paying >�300 for a video card. As for a cheaper option, the V3 3000 is well priced now (from �80 to �109 depending on where you look) and is a solid card, plus you might find a TNT2 for this sort of price. Basically avoid the big chain stores if you want good prices. Also a GeForce 1 (without DDR memory) will be around the �150 area. If you're going to spend �150, it makes sense to spend �220 instead and get either a GeForce 2 GTS or a V5 and have a card that won't need replacing for a long time. :)

Simon Brown <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:36w85.16458$[email hidden]... > I hate to do this, since there's nothing worse than finding out you'vespent > too much on something, but the V5 5500 AGP is �249 in PC World and �219mail > order from Insight in the UK and the Creative Labs GeForce 2 GTS is �216 > from Insight and �269 from PC World (inc vat). To be exactly I paid 270 pund for my Asus V7700 which is one of the fastest GeForce 2 GTS cards, faster as the Annihalator 2 from Greative.... And it sure was worth every penny... The 64 mb GeForce 2 from Guillemot is wel over 330 pound.

> If you're going to spend �150, it makes sense to spend �220 instead andget > either a GeForce 2 GTS or a V5 and have a card that won't need replacingfor > a long time. :) Depends on your cpu offcourse... GeForce2 and V5's only get their full potential on processors over 550 mzh....

Ah, I see, all the prices I'm quoting are 32 MB versions. Sorry about that. Do these cards really need 64 mb? I've seen games released recently that still run on 4MB cards. Also while the V5 has 64 MB, since it has to load a copy of each texture for each VSA-100 chip, it can only load <32 MB of different textures. I wouldn't be put off buying a 32MB card, I'm convinced it's still more than enough vram.