at the moment, both of your CPU and graphics card are holding you back from
3D games. I would suggest get new mobo and CPU first, as 400mhz CPU is way
out of date in gaming, through G450 isn't designed for gaming either, but
you will get more performance from mobo+CPU upgrade at this moment.
Don't feel bad if you can't afford a new graphics card, soon Geforce4 Ti4200
will hit street, that will kill off all current Geforce3/ATi cards.
Currently, 3D card market is in a strange time, Geforce4 MX completely
killed all Geforce2, Geforce3 has no longer life when G4 ti4200 hit street,
ATi has to release something fast if it wants to stand in the war of 3D. You
may feel lucky as you don't have to buy something today, and feel really bad
two weeks later as more powerful yet cheaper products hit the market.

I, myself is one of the unlucky one - I had to buy a new card (G3 ti200) to
replace my out-of-date MX card because (1) I'm in Australis, that means you
guys in the State has few month advantage over here as well as hugh price
diffence <at my part of world, price could be as twice expensive than in the
US> (2) my MX starting failing on hardware level.

Hope this help.

Jun Qian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Guise" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 3:16 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] CPU or Graphics


> I'm looking at upgrading my system (mainly with an eye towards 3D games)
> and I'd like to know what would be the best move for my limited budget.
>
> I have Win98 with AMD 400, 256 SDRam, Matrox 450. The upgrade would be
Asus
> A7V 133 mboard, Duron 1000 and a graphics card based on the GeForce 3 GTS
> chip, however I can't buy all three components at once.
>
> The question is, would I get a better performance boost (remember, 3D
> games) from the mboard/CPU combination or the graphics card?

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