486 upgrade question

Has anybody tried or currently using the upgrade chip by AMD and another by Evergreen (I think) to boost a AMD DX4 100 to a pentium 133? I've seen these chips for around $100 and was wondering if it's a fair upgrade or a total waste if they even work at all... Any suggestion/ comments would sure be appreciated. Current system: AMD DX4 16 Meg RAM Diamond Stealth 64 VLB 1Meg USR 33.6 SB 16 Pro Win 95 (have to be in DOS mode to run NASCAR) ect. ect. I am able to run NASCAR1 in DOS mode with: Grandstands on (no crowd) Car texture on Track Lines/ Skid marks on 25 cars (7ahead 3behind) 3 cars heard My Goal/Dream/wet my pants desire is to run NAS2 with at least the above options on but would really love to be up there with the rendition group. Ah- life is but a dream... Anyhow, I can (weasle out) afford $250-$300. Without to many laughs at me what are my best options. Thanks, Roger F. R. Faust aka Xducer

for a new pentium 166 without tha monitor it is 400 dollars up here ....thats the way 2 go!!!

says...

Quoted text (33 lines)

> says... > > Has anybody tried or currently using the upgrade chip by AMD and another > > by Evergreen (I think) to boost a AMD DX4 100 to a pentium 133? I've seen > > these chips for around $100 and was wondering if it's a fair upgrade or a > > total waste if they even work at all... Any suggestion/ comments would sure > > be appreciated. > > Current system: > > AMD DX4 > > 16 Meg RAM > > Diamond Stealth 64 VLB 1Meg > > USR 33.6 > > SB 16 Pro > > Win 95 (have to be in DOS mode to run NASCAR) > > ect. ect. > > I am able to run NASCAR1 in DOS mode with: > > Grandstands on (no crowd) > > Car texture on > > Track Lines/ Skid marks on > > 25 cars (7ahead 3behind) > > 3 cars heard > > My Goal/Dream/wet my pants desire is to run NAS2 with at least the above > > options on but would really love to be up there with the rendition group. > > Ah- life is but a dream... Anyhow, I can (weasle out) afford $250-$300. > > Without to many laughs at me what are my best options. > > Thanks, > > Roger F. > > R. Faust > > aka Xducer

Roger, I'm not familiar with that chip, however, should it do what they say... then how could you go wrong? Perhaps you can buy it locally at a reputable firm that stands behind their products they sell, and if it *doesn't* perform as claimed... refund? Also, have you considered a used Pentium system? Perhaps you wouldn't be able to reach for a "top of the line"... but could you perhaps find a good value that way? I hope to have a used "partial" P75 system to sell soon, but that wouldn't help... you're wanting to go faster than that, and I can't blame you! As for N2 on the possible upgraded machine you stated. I race N2 on my current machine (the above mentioned P75), but as a rule, to keep "chop" to a minimum, I can only run: draw 8 cars ahead, 2 behind, hear 3 Draw stripes and skid marks (these help me to establish turn/brake points, etc) Car textures on. As for the rest of the "eye candy"... notta. Zip. Nothing. If I try for stands, no crowd... here comes the slide show. So, as you can see, if you get to that P133 benchmark... you should be able to do what you're hoping for. As for worrying about getting "too many laughs"...anybody on this r.a.s. that does do so... well... that person just showed their ignorance. Hey, making our $$ stretch and getting more bang for the buck? That's nothing to laugh at, that's smart. God Bless, Andre

Oh my, donn't even think of going that route. New motherboard and chip is the only way to go. But, what is hurting you most at the moment is the video card. 1M of video ram is definitely below standard. Suggestions? First buy a new MB and chip (~$250 for a P133, I can give you the URL if you wish) and second grab a rendition video card. The V1000 chip is pretty cheap these days with the upcoming V2000 series. I personally own a P200 w/ Sierra Screamin' 3D card and enjoy all textures + all cars with 20+fps at ALL times. ICR2-3D (which comes bundled w/ S-3D) rarely drops below 30fps with all the goodies. Man, you don't know what you are missing. As I said, though, first step is to get rid of that AMD (a decent chip for the price, BTW) and get up to Pentium level performance. You can always overclock that 133 if it isn't good enough for ya ;) ER Summary... New MB+P133 chip ~$250 New Rendition card ~$100 = $350 for a difference you won't believe!!! > Has anybody tried or currently using the upgrade chip by AMD and another > by Evergreen (I think) to boost a AMD DX4 100 to a pentium 133? Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip!!

If I'm not mistaken, the upgrade you're talking about upgrades you to a 133MHz 486 (not a Pentium), comparable to a Pentium 75. Kingston sells it as the Turbo 133, right? Not much of an upgrade from where you are now. To use Rendition, you need a PCI motherboard. The Rendition V1000 cards are going for around $100 now (and will probably disappear when the the V2200 cards come out). A PCI/Pentium motherboard is probably $100+. A Pentium 133 is going for about $120. Assuming you can use the rest of your current components (memory might be a problem, but at least its cheap), you could have a pretty hot system somewhere close to your budget. Good luck. Before you send me UCE, I know what you're thinking... Did he complain to five or six postmasters last month? Now, you must ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do you, punk?

At work my company upgraded one pc using the Evergreen solution, and swapped another pc for a 100mhz pentium. Both were loaded with the same company software and similar memory size, so to test the speed and compare them both we booted them up the same and executed Word from the toolbar. The 100mhz pentium was far faster than the evergreen, which is supposedly faster. I guess it's also down to the other components too, but I'd reccommend going the pucker pentium and new board. -- To reply, remove NOSMEG from e-mail address.

As someone else said the first thing you really need is a better video card... most likely your local computer shop will give you some trade-in value for your 486 MB and CPU, and your old Video card... maybe $100 or so. Then you can have them put in a Pentium motherboard (PCI) and a new PCI video card with at least 2 megs of video ram. Chances are with your trade in of your old equipment, you can get away with upgrading for about $150-200 cash. I am in Canada, but here at my local computer shop I upgraded around 9 months ago, from my 486/100 to my Cyrix 150+ (and I have very good performance, and never had any problems with it for all you "Cyrix you get what you pay for" folks) for about $150 with trade-in of my old 486 board. Prices have dropped since then.... also, you can now get 3d video cards here for $60-99 Canadian, so I can only assume in the US the prices are going to be the same or correspondingly lower (allowing for the 35% exchange rate). If you are independently wealthy as many in this newsgroup seem to be you can get one of the more expensive video cards that has all the bells and whistles but there seems to be little point considering the different video standards around... you may get one that runs your favourite game now but you will need to buy another one in 6 months to optimize your favourite game then! So basically, finding a chip to plug into your 486 motherboard is pretty much a waste of money... replace the motherboard and the CPU, it will not cost you that much more cash than the plug-in chip, and get you will get much better performance. BTW, when I had my AMD 486DX4, I had an ATI Mach 64 2 meg video card... in NASCAR 1, I ran full fields, max cars ahead seen and 5 behind, car texures, skids and paint, smoke and dirt, objects on... set most everything else to auto (rarely had any of the auto textures switching off except during starts/restarts) and a very smooth frame rate... basically the only difference between your system and mine at the time was the video card.. makes a big difference!