Reviews

I love games that push the limits of 3D accelerator technology. In fact, I'm a nut about it. My first 3D board was a Sierra Screamin' 3D, which had 4MB video RAM and a Rendition Verite 1000 at it's core. I then upgraded from a Diamond Stealth II 220 (Rendition Verite 2100 chipset) to a Diamond V550 (based on TNT nVidia) with 16 MB of video RAM. Today, I'm using a 32 MB TNT2 Diamond Viper 770 Ultra. Each board was twice as fast as the previous.

CPU-wise, this past year has seen an AMD K6-2 w/ 3D NOW! running at 300 MHZ, a AMD-K6-3 400 MHZ, and a 450 MHZ Intel Pentium III that is overclocked to 567 MHZ. These systems, networked via 10basedT, makes multiplayer gaming a joy. I've been playing Falcon 4.0, Quake III Arena Test, Quake II, Half-Life, Monster Truck Madness II, Flight Simulator 98, Combat Flight Simulator, Midtown Madness, StarCraft, Forsaken, Recoil, Fly!, Star Wars Pod Racer, Jedi Knight, Descent 3, and Unreal. Yes, I actually purchased all these games this past year, and others that aren't worth mentioning here. Falcon 4.0, Descent 3, and Flight SImulator 98 are my favorites at this time.

My how time flies! My latest machies are a 256 MB RAM 1.0 GHZ Dell Inspiron 8000 Laptop and a gaming system that uses a PIII 933 MHZ and has 128 MB of RAM. Even so, CPU frequencies are now past 2.2 GHZ.

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How much time do you have? Although I've pieced my systems together since 1995, I'm not sure it was any cheaper to do so after the time spent tinkering around with various settings and the ensuing conflicts and drivers problems. You do learn a lot however, and it works for me because I'm able to constantly upgrade the components in the machine throughout the year, and never have to spend more than about $200 at any one time. If you buy, make sure it's a system that allows upgrading components such as video cards, memory, and CPU. Some rock-bottom priced PCs solder a video chip and/or a sound chip onto the motherboard, often making an upgrade an impossibility.

What are you going to notice the most? The quality of the display- provided by the video board and monitor. Money spent on a large, quality display (17" or better) is money well spent. Monitors de-value much slower than PC components, so it doesn't hurt to budget a little extra for this up front- your eyes will thank you and in the long run you'll probably shave a few centimeters off those coke-bottle glasses you'll eventually be wearing.

Even if 3D gaming is not your forte, you should consider buying all the video card your wallet can offer. The video has a strong impact in how we perceive our computers and applications- if the video looks bad, EVERYTHING will look bad. The good news is that really good boards are out there, some for less than $100. The weird thing is that there are also $250 boards out there, that can't even perform at the level of my last $89 board. So buyer beware, read a few reviews before accepting the manufacture's claims about their board. I recommend a TNT or TNT2 based video board, just be certain to download the latest drives from NVIDIA after you install it.

Today it's hard to go wrong. All CPU offerings are beginning to converge in terms of performance. Intel processors were the floating point champs until AMD released the K7, named the Athlon. But this CPU is still rather pricy, and the price of the Intel PIII line is falling through the floor. Cyrix's role in the semi-conductor business is in question, since the company has been sold to a motherboard manufacturer. I was using a AMD-K6-2 w/3D-NOW!, but upgraded to a 400 MHZ K6-3 when the price fell out on those. I also purchased a 450 MHZ PIII when the price hit $201. Incredible when you consider that this chip was selling for $600 only a couple of months ago. Thank goodness we have competitors such as AMD to keep the pressure on Intel. If it were not for AMD, we would be paying $900 for CPUs in our computers.

Sisoft Sandra's CPU MIPS benchmark has been run on all my machines. Here are the numbers in MIPS (Millions Instructions Per Second):

266 MHZ Intel Mobile PII                       670 MIPS
300 MHZ AMD K6-2 w/ 3D-NOW!        820 MIPS
366 MHZ Intel Celeron                            870 MIPS
375 MHZ AMD K6-3 w/ 3D-NOW!       1100 MIPS
567 MHZ Intel PIII                                1300 MIPS      ... or 1.3 BIPS.

The most expensive of the bunch was actually the slowest, the 266 MHZ PII. The cheapest was the PIII, at $201. But they were all purchased at different times, so my how times have changed. At one time, I was recommending AMD over Intel because they provide 90% the power of Intel at about 50% of the cost. Then, Intel released the Celeron at competive prices, and in a further twist AMD has now released the Athlon, which is faster than any solution Intel can provide. If you're not into 3D gaming, it looks like the consumer can't go wrong anymore, since all new systems are being shipped with more than adequate horsepower for routine activities such as Internet Browsing, or Word Processing.

I recommend getting a retail boxed Intel P3-450 and overclocking it to 567 MHZ. I did this, and saved $500.