It seems you only purchased your computer a year ago and now it is obsolete. Buying another one is going to run you another $700 - $1200 depending on options. Well I have a SUN Sparc Unix Station, NT Server Tower, A Linux Server, a SCO Unix server, an AT&T Unix server, one NT Desktop Workstation, and three Win 98 Multimedia computers. (2 boys (8 and 7), and one big boy, age, uhhh… 38, ahem. So It seems I am always upgrading something. This may sound like a lot, but I often work from home, often on my Gateway Solo 2500 Notebook or my IBM Thinkpad 600E. (Forgot about those…) These are all tied together by a 3COM 3300 Layer 2 10/100Mbs switch, and a Cisco 2500 router. This is really overkill for the home, but we are mainly concerned with upgrading those three Win98 multi-media stations with USB based Weapon systems including the Weapon throttle and Joystick (All have the USB Saitek X-35/X-36U USB flight stick and weapon throttle so we can each fly a F-16 or Mig 29 Fulcrum and shoot each other down…. in the normal family type of way! (:-)

You can't just go out an buy three new computers! But I want the latest in Video cards and a reasonable CPU processor. The new graphics cards contain GPU's, Graphics Processor Units. Today they often have more processing ability than some of the CPU's out there. To process video a computer must deal with 4 entities called pipelines. In the first pipeline the image is transformed from 3D to 2D (since your video is 2D). Second it calculates lighting and shading of the image. These two are normally handled by the CPU on the motherboard in current generation video cards. The 3D accelerator handles the last two. Setup, and where it all comes together, rendering. (Where lighting is applied to all visible surfaces, and the final 2D image is completed/rendered). I can't go in to detail as the process is beyond the scope of this epionion. But the key thing is that the new generation of GPU based video boards do all four pipelines on the card. This means the new video card can process about 16 million triangles per second. Your older 3D card with CPU can handle less than 1/16 that much. Since most folks have the older boards, the game manufacturers are not producing games that need 16M triangles per second, not even close. But the key is that the GPU performing all four functions frees up much of the cpu's resources. Where a full video 1024x768 full screen would peg your CPU at near 100% utilization, it is easily only 1/3 that or less.

Game makers will indeed use that CPU speed to make gaming more intelligent, by providing additional artificial intelligence, and more realistic physics. This means you crash a car, it will no longer just "Bounce" off something with no dents. Look for severe damage, and realistic scenes.

Ok, so you may have a Socket 7 motherboard with a AMD K6-X CPU in it, or Pentium MMX or worse. Your memory hopefully is DIMM 168 pin running 66Mhz or even SIMM running 66Mhz. Likely the later, so it will have to go.

OK. So your new AGP based video card will likely run about $160-200. It will likely have a GPU, or multiple chips handling all four pipelines. (There are lots of arguments for and against one verses many, but that is not the issue here). It is possible you are looking at one of the Nvidia GeForce 256 AGP 4X cards. There are many, and they all do a pretty good job. The technology has had time to mature a bit, and Direct X version
7.0 and greater has direct support for the Nvidia GeForce 256 chipset. So any game requiring DirectX will auto-magically support your video card. Neat huh?

The bad news is that you will need at least DIMM memory. While some motherboards will support a mixture of DIMM and SIMM, they are becoming rare as we are moving to SDIMM, and RBUS memory. SIMM is falling by the side of the road. Your new motherboard should have at least 128MB of ram. Check pricing. Sometimes you will find a special on a single 128 MB 168 pin SDIMM, or it may be cheaper to buy two 64MB 168 pin SDIMM's. One place to save money is to purchase 66MHZ ram instead of the more expensive PC 100Mhz ram. I recommend the 100Mhz ram, but you can buy the less expensive 66Mhz ram if it don't fit your budget. So you are at about $250 for the video card and 128MB ram.

What motherboard do I buy? How can I tell if it is Intel AGP version 2.0 compliant? The manufacturer does not say if it is or isn't, and I want to keep costs down. Well how about avoiding the latest and greatest 1Ghz AMD Athalon processor or latest PIII 800Mhz chips and get something more down to Earth? And unfortunately manufacturers don't often say if their AGP slots are Intel Specification version 2 compliant or not. If you pick a board that is not Intel AGP spec vers 2.0 compliant, your AGP card WILL give you trouble.

I looked at a bunch of boards and read through the technical design specifications and selected a board that had all the qualities, hence it SHOULD work. Had to try it. I don't normally buy SOYO motherboards, but I have found this one to work with both 66Mhz ram and 100Mhz (PC100) SDIMM ram (3 168 pin slots for SDIMM's). it has a 4X AGP slot (Your GPU is likely a 4X AGP that requires a 2X or 4X AGP slot, and likely requires Intel version 2.0 compliance. This motherboard is AGP 4X and Intel AGP spec. vers 2.0 compliant. It will also run CPU processors at 66MHZ, 100Mhz or 133Mhz bus speeds (Sometimes called the Front Side Bus (FSB.

The SOYO SY-7VBA 133 is $99. I purchased it from Tiger Direct. (www.tigerdirect.com). I have no love for Tiger Direct, but they carry many boards at reasonable prices. This board will take PIII, and Celeron processors of Socket 370 type. I purchased a 500Mhz Intel Celeron (socket 370) processor for $99. (Don't forget to get a Socket 7 cooling fan with Thermal Gel, as this processor gets hot. The fan and Gel help keep it cool, and the motherboard reports the CPU's temperature, and current cooling fan speed. The SOYO motherboard also comes with drivers that will set off an alarm if the chip gets too hot (due to a fan failure or some other reason). With the proper fan and thermal gel, the processor should not overheat. So less than $200 for the motherboard and CPU.
Also the motherboard is UDMA66 capable and comes with the required ATA66 data cable. So drive access is amazingly fast. It also is an ATX style board with built in Audio on the motherboard. I have no issue with motherboard manufacturers putting Audio on the board and even a 10/100 Ethernet RJ45, but I prefer to select my own Video board. The board has 4 PCI slots and 2 ISA slots, standard 2 IDE ATA66, 1P/2S/2USB, 1Mic in, 1 Line in, 1 Line out, 1 D15 Game Port. PS2Mouse/PS2 Kbd. This motherboard also has the ability to boost the voltage if you decide to overclock the CPU. Bus speed, CPU voltage, Memory Speed are all automatically set in the BIOS, or you can override. I didn't have to. It identified my CPU, voltages, memory speed and Front side bus (FSB) speed.

So it looks like the Video card, ram, new Motherboard and new Processor will run you about $450 with no lifetime commitments to MSN networks, and 128MB of ram not the normally quoted 64MB ram. Latest GPU video and high speed CPU. It will likely be the fastest thing you ever did see, and the graphics will likely impress you. Don't forget to run the GPU Video card manufacturers demo's as they normally have small programs that demonstrate the capabilities of the graphics card.

Key items: SOYO SY-7VBA 133 Motherboard
Intel 500Mhz Celeron Processor
66Mhz, PC100Mhz, or 133Mhz 168 pin SDIMM Ram
GPU based AGP video card.

Good luck with it! Contact me if you need further details or I can be of any hhelp at defilm@acm.org.






Recommended: Yes