While you can't run the V3 at 32bit, I do remember it had nicer 16bit than anything i've ever used.

Still, I'd say go for the 8500 LE - $72 for the 64MB version and only $88 for the 128MB version off of Newegg.com

uhh regardless of cpu, upgrading to a vid card thats got alot more the 16megs will make a huge dif. And no it wont slow your comp down, your comp will only use what it can handle. It may not be able to use the full resourses of a geforce 4 but it certainly wont be slowed down by using it.

The amount of RAM will only really affect the quality of textures the game can handle, and shouldn't necessarily be the determining factor. While 64MB should be (and honestly, with today's video cards, literally is) the minimum, there is a big difference between a GF2 Ultra with 64MB of RAM and and GF4 ti4200 64MB. I'm not saying that 16MB isn't a limiting factor - it definitely is in modern games. But the other components, such as GPU and the RAM speed and bandwidth, also make a big difference.

I will probably be at least partially repeating what others have said....

1) It actually works?

500mhz and a Voodoo3? that's almost exactly my old computer before upgrading. Glad it runs.

2) New card will make the game prettier:

Voodoo3's can only run 16-bit color. For 3D games that use lots of alpha-blending (like transparancies) this can lead to nasty banding effects. A good example would be the coronas and rings and whatnot in FL. 32-bit color (on any card) will look much prettier.

3) New card will make game faster:

Since ye olden GeForce 1, video cards can offload some of the geometry work that CPU's used to have to do. Older cards can do it with Hardware Transform and Lighting. Newer cards have vertex and pixel shaders. Either way, the card can do math instead of the CPU, yielding increased framerate. (course, on a 500mhz machine, don't expect miracles)

In terms of buying Advice, I'd recommend one of the Radeons in the 9000 range. or a Geforce4 of some sort (but not an MX, because they are the devil)

ER

jup mx are send by the devil to screw humans ... or maybe from nvidia to screw their customores, who knows :drevil:

I just want to make this clear, that you do not get tempted to buy one, a gf4 mx is slower or as slow as a geforce2 gts.

and well, no nothing will get slower with you upgrading you gfx card.
it will get faster. though with just 500 mhz (I guess your dell is 500 mhz, cause I can only guess, you did not told us what cpu) a gf4 will be definatly anyway just running at gf2 speed ... which is still alot faster than the v3

so if you want to upgrade sooner or later your cpu, a ti4200 may be a good choise, or those nice lower end ati cards, if you not planning to upgrade soon, I suggest you get really something in the geforce2 range. will give you still a good boost, and you will not waste your money on something that does not use its full potential on your cpu anyway.

Zog.

Your machine will benefit due to the following reasons :

1 - More video ram leads to less system ram usage for texture storage.
2 - No more worrying about Vo0d0o compatibility.
3 - You will still have the voodoo as a fallback, if you wish.
4 - Your desktop, gfx apps et al will all benefit as a result.
5 - Your gaming experience will become more enjoyable.

Your machine MAY not benefit due to the following reasons :

1 - Voodoo-only games will obviously not work with it. Oh dear.
2 - Mysterious anomalies may appear in your system due to the new alien drivers.
3 - Mysterious anomalies may interfere with your routine due to the sudden activation of previously dormant DirectX functions.

Now. You have a Celeron 500. I would assume that means that you have a matching 64 or 128 megs of ram and, say, 10 - 20 gigs of hard drive space.

Do yourself a favour and get a second hand GF3 or less (I use a GF2 MX and it works flawlessly but with minor slowdowns) because you will NOT be able to enjoy the absolute best that the top range cards have to offer with your present system.

When your system DOES get good enough, you'll be pissed that you only have a crappy GF4 instead of an nVidia Radeon X302 Platinum Edition with four terabytes of BioRAM and NanoByte(TM) AI Architecture.

Spend, if you really must, the difference on more RAM and a bigger HD instead.

as the above stated, get a new computer

A 2nd-hand GF3 ti200 will do you well enough, but if you can't find that, I still say 8500LE. The 9000 Pro is decent in the low-end, but it has half the texture units of the 8500, and will be slower than the latter in modern games. Considering that the 8500LE is less than $10 more expensive than the 9000 Pro, I would spring for it.

Thanks for the help dudes. I think ill go with the gforce 4. Getting a new computer is out of the question, im in college and im strapped for cash enough as it is. Ill spring for a new card, not top of the line, but a new computer just aint possible. How muchis a cpu upgrade anyways, say and AMD athlon?

I got my Athlon XP 1700+ t-bred B for $54 off newegg, and currently have it oc'ed to around 1.9ghz.

You'd also have to buy a new mobo, too, and new RAM. RAM's pretty cheap now; Crucial 512MB sticks are around $50 last I checked.

And I got my Epox 8rda+ N-Force 2 Mobo for about $116 with shipping - couldn't be happier. If you want to save some money, though, I use an ECS KC75SA Pro in my other machine, running a 1600+, which is plenty good enough - it was only around $70. So if you've got $200 to spare, you can give yourself a pretty significant upgrade.

My advice....


My older machine is a Dell P3 500Mhz machine.
It orginally had a TNT 16MB card in it and I faced the same decision.
After literally months of asking around this is the conclusion I came to...

If you want to upgrade your video card, and NOT the CPU, I would suggest buying the GeForce2 Titanium.
It seems to work the best with the slower CPU, and you don't pay for all that performance the rest of your machine will not use anyways.

If you want to upgrade the CPU as well.
I would suggest boosting it up to the P3 1Ghz CPU, or maybe even the Celeron 1.4Ghz CPU on the Powerleap slocket.
Remember Dell machines are VERY proprietary beasts. For example, you CANNOT use any non-dell mobo's in a Dell case without having to slice and reroute all the connections to the front of the case. So, if you want to use a Athlon CPU you need a new Mobo, which means new case, new power supply since it will most likely need more power than the 200Watt one you have, new RAM since it will be DDR not SD, and you will then want to get the most out of the hard-drive so that would need upgraded...so, it's a whole new machine needed just to upgrade the CPU to anything other than those two it seems.
(I would actually go with the P3-1Ghz, as it actually seems to work better on a gaming machine due to a Celeron's bad math skills. hehe)

Here is a link to help you:
http://www.roberthancock.com/dell


Fly well,

Pyrate Dredd


Edited by - Dredd on 12-03-2003 20:08:34

That's true, you'd likely have to invest in a new case and power supply as well. But we aren't talking anything really expensive here. I think it'd be a more worthwhile investment to buy new mobo, cpu, case/PSU, and RAM, than trying to eke more life out of your system. You don't necessarily have to upgrade the HD - I've plugged old PC66 drives into my newer Athlon machines. But it wouldn't hurt, either.

Investing in older hardware is an expensive venture at this point. Socket 370 FCPGA 1GHz P3s are $99; 1.2 Tualatins are $109 (naturally, what you buy depends on what mobo you have). So if you want to stick with what you have, you should restrict your spending to parts that you can take with you into a new machine - EG, just the video card at this point. Then when you want to upgrade other parts, it would be better that you invest in a new system rather than just buy an overpriced CPU for your old mobo.

When it comes time to upgrade, note that the ECS board I mentioned does support SDR SDRAM, so you can use your old SDRAM in it until you get the money for DDR (which is as I mentioned extremely cheap right now).

Edited by - Marco on 12-03-2003 20:31:36