Older CPU with newer video cards 3

[glarson52]

I have an HP Pavilion 8652C with a Pentium 3 550 mhz processor with 100 mhz front side bus and 128 kb of ram. It came with the video on the motherboard, "integrated Intel Direct 3D graphics with up to 1 MB dynamic memory." I'm going to add a video card. I've read in a couple places that I shouldn't even bother with the high end cards or even most of the middle level ones because with my cpu I won't get much, if any, advantage over low end cards. Any opinions?

 

[craigey]

The reason being is that your CPU will bottleneck all the instrction to/from the high end graphics card. It wont be able to keep up with the calculations that are being performed and as a result you wont see any great improvement by spending a load of money on an all singing, all dancing graphics card.

Your best bet is to upgrade the cpu/mboard & memory, then get the graphics card of your hearts desire. You can pick up an amd athlon XP 1800 for just under £50 in the UK, and probably a lot less in the USA (that's compared with £100+ last year).

 

[paparazi]

What you will find is:
1) You could well have a compatibility issue with a newer card on your machine.
2) Because of the drastic bottle neck caused by CPU, memory, harddrive and motherboard chipset (infact your whole system) something like a geforce 2 or possibly 3 Ti 200 will perform as well as a newer geforce 4 Ti.
We have seen many users on this forum complaining of poor performance with there new cards and in some cases stating that they are "slower" than there old cards, and to some extent it is true to say a slightly older card is like a GF3 Ti200 is going to be better suited to your current system specs.
This card "GF3 Ti200" in my opinion is about as much power your system is going to be capable of using efficiently.
So where do you go from here? well either stick with your current system and go for a GF2 or 3 or big upgrade time which will open up your choices for the latest and greatest. Martin Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[killowhat]

both of these guys are right, i have onboard graphics, p3, 55o mhz ,384mb, have asked many questions and gotten a lot of excellent advice. you definately need more memory, as far as cpu, mobo etc. depends on $$$.
do you have agp slot
do you have adequate power supply
do really want to do an upgrade
i still havent made mind up yet. im probably going to get a middle of the road pci video card,and to quote a famous band [ LET IT BE.] pearl.

 

[Kocky]

Also keep in mind that the new range video cards wont work on your system bacause you have an outdated AGP port.
The new cards require AGP 2.0. Your board will almost certainly have a AGP 1.0 slot. The AGP 2.0 port deliveres a higher voltage. So don't try it. It will be a dissapointment.

Greetings and a happy christmas and
a happy new year.