Hi,

I've been to atomicmpc.com.au, icannt.org and now here in hope of answer to my question without being told un-exact answers and/or told to upgrade.

I have a Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.4GHz equipped with 3x512mb pc133 sdram. I want to use my computer for playing games but i don't want to upgrade anything other than my graphics. What is the best graphics card my system will handle? It uses an AGP interface which handles any AGP card. Please help me pick a graphics card and give me reasoning for your answer.

Thanks heaps!

Regards, Mortagen

The Tualatin 1.4 was an excellent chip in its day, easily faster than the flagship (and more expensive) 2.0GHz P4.

The 6600GT and 7600GS video cards from nVidia are inexpensive and would provide fine performance on that setup. If you overclocked the processor, you could get daring and try a 7600GT. One thing to watch out for is the power supply. If it has less than 17 amps on the +12 volt rail, then going for a card that doesn't require direct connection to the power supply is a better idea. Such cards include certain brands of "vanilla" GeForce 6600s (check before buying) and all ATI Radeon 9600XTs.

Or you could just get another power supply. :)

If you know how to overclock the CPU, consider that as well. The Tualatin has always been bottlenecked by its 133MHz bus, and thus performance just shoots up when the bus is overclocked. I have mine running at 1.66GHz (bus at 158MHz), and noticed a pretty sizeable boost over the default 1400/133. 1580/150 is a safe bet.

Super Pentium III: NOW WITH 7950GT AGP!
PIII-S cpu overclocked to 1.66GHz--As fast as a 2.5GHz P4!
2GB of PC2700 memory
QDI Advance 12T board
Audigy 2
Vista Home Premium

Thanks buddy!

So how did u determine what would and wouldnt bottleneck? i'm so lost when it comes to that.

I'm now looking at building a P3 rig with 2xTully 1.4 CPUs, 4gb sdram/ddr ram (dunno which yet... hope ddr) and a kickass agp card for it. LONG LIVE P3!!!

Thanks man! please reply! =)

Mortagen

I found this motherboard and i like it alot!

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/...

I only wish it had ddr400 support... Do you know of any ddr400 motherboards that support dual tully CPUs and agp4x or better? I'd love you forever if you do =)

Thanks!!!!!

Regards, Mortagen

PS. Your P3 rig is beasty! =)

Why are you looking at motherboards? And why a dual CPU board? You don't need DDR400 for a CPU that runs at 133MHz FSB...all you need is PC133 or DDR266. And even with DDR266, you'd see little or no performance gain over PC133. Stick with what you have & just shop around for a video card.

Best Gaming Video Cards For The Money: AGP Interface

Because i want to build a dual tully 1.4 box with agp4x and ddr400 if i can find a mobo that supports all these features... any help please?

If not, do you know where i can find a pro 266td?

Thanks in advanced!

Regards, Mortagen

"i don't want to upgrade anything other than my graphics"

Then why are you asking about motherboards?

"i want to build a dual tully 1.4 box with agp4x and ddr400"

You must have heard that for best performance, the FSB:DRAM ratio should be at 1:1? In other words, your DDR400 would have to be underclocked.

Wow! I definitely didn't know that dual-socket, DDR boards for the P3 existed! Christ, if I can find one on eBay for below $30, I may pick one up myself! I do have a second Tualatin 1.4 chip just lying around, and it's been collecting dust since my dual socket Intel board blew up last year. I wonder if that board's overclockable?

A DDR-based P3 board will take DDR400 memory; it just won't run the memory at that speed. It will match the bus speed of the processor. I'm running DDR333 on my Apollo Pro266T board, and it's running at DDR316 (158x2). As Jam said, there's no point running memory at speeds above the CPU bus speed. Performance would be exactly the same (or even slightly lower, depending on the chipset).

Super Pentium III: NOW WITH 7950GT AGP!
PIII-S cpu overclocked to 1.66GHz--As fast as a 2.5GHz P4!
2GB of PC2700 memory
QDI Advance 12T board
Audigy 2
Vista Home Premium

I see... Well why do you want one if the performance may be reduced slightly?

Thanks!

Regards, Mortagen

If you're talking about the RAM, what I meant is that, if you run the RAM at 200MHz (400DDR) on a board hosting a CPU with a 133MHz bus, memory performance wouldn't increase.

Super Pentium III: NOW WITH 7950GT AGP!
PIII-S cpu overclocked to 1.66GHz--As fast as a 2.5GHz P4!
2GB of PC2700 memory
QDI Advance 12T board
Audigy 2
Vista Home Premium

Ok buddy, so how does your box run? wanna add me to msn? bganl001k@hotmail.com =)

I'd love to talk to you about your box!

Thanks!

Regards, Mortagen