At 10:35 PM 2/17/1998 Lance Cummings wrote:
>
>Lance has a P5-120 from Gateway, circa mid-1995.  He's pumped
>the RAM up to 48 megs, and he's added a BusLogic 958, a
>Seagate Barracuda, and an Archive PYTHON DAT drive.
>
>But Lance has discovered computer graphics.  I mean he's
>*really* discovered them -- big time.  Now, realizes he needs raw
>processing speed, and a motherboard that can cache more than the
>measly 64 megs his Aladdin can handle.  :(
>
>Lance is torn between the MMX OverDrive Processor, which
>seems like a nice price, but would only take him up to 180mhz.,
>and a new mb, with its unknown intricacies of size and
>compatibility issues.  (He doesn't really know which boards will
>fit in his full tower, and which won't.)


Lance:

Others have fully covered the Mobo upgrade path. That
Full tower should take most boards. May need to buy
an insert or use a Dremel to get an ATX's ports aligned,
though.

You didn't say what kind of graphics you are doing. If you are
doing AUTOCAD, your upgrade choices would differ from
say a 3D video setup. Do you use OpenGL?

I would check your motherboard manual. I suspect your
Gateway will take a classic P-200 (about $125 if you still
find them). The P-120 is not much faster than a P-100
because the the former has a 60MHz BUS, so a P-200
will be almost twice as fast (66MHz BUS).

The lack of MMX is not generally important unless your
software is written for it.

A faster video card would make a big difference but I don't
have any recommendations unless you specify your
software. A fast graphics chipset, fast video memory,
fast/wide video bus, onboard rendering, BNC connectors;
you have a lot of choices, depending on the application.
Matrox Millenium II with 8MB is good for AUTOCAD, but
its competitors have caught up (except maybe for the drivers).

Also, video is dependent on your monitor. If it cannot
run the highest refresh rates, you may be wasting
money on that fancy video card that refreshes at 120MHz
and which might burn out your monitor.

I recommend you wait (or not put a lot of money into an
upgrade) because things will change big in the next 3-6
months or the prices will tumble radically (or both). The
P-II without L2 cache (cheaper and probably available
as an overdrive option), MMX-2 instruction set, and the
Voodoo II chipsets should be out then. Windows 98 should
be out, too.

Me, for $350 wholesale, I'd get the P-200 and the Millenium II.
And go to 64MB RAM. Save the remaining funds for later.

Regards,

John Chin


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