Will it work?

Quoth wrote:

 > Hi Folks,
 >
 > Have become hooked on Eve Online - but it won't work on my second PC -
 > an old Gateway PIII 500 running Win98SE with a TNT2 Graphics card in
 > an AGP slot.
 >
 > Don't want to invest too much on this old box - have managed to get a
 > 677MHz chip and have read up on the GForce FX 5200 card - but I'm not
 > sure if this card will work in the machine.
 >
 > Anyone able to say Yes or No?
 >
 > Thanks

Sadly enough, the 5200 will likely be more than enough for your system.
The older P3's are generally maxed out around a GF2 Ultra to Geforce
3. After that you seem drastically diminishing returns in performance.

The main thing hurting performance will be overall system throughput,
not your CPU (surprisingly). A good motherboard with dual channel
memory and lots of bandwidth is absolutely essential nowadays. It's
like a free processor upgrade for the same given CPU (XP2500, 3200, etc).

Eve will play ok-ish.

Good news though, if you want to, your most expensive upgrade will be
getting XP Home. It's about 80-90 USD. Everything else comes pretty
cheap. New Nforce2 or KT400 mobo, 75.00. New XP2600/2800, 50.00.
512MB PC2700 DDR, 70.00.

Around 300.00 will get you a brand new system and you can keep many of
the components you have. Eve would play great on even a mediocre
upgrade like that and you'd be set for pretty much everything else.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Will it work? 

Thanks all.

I'm only going for a Graphics Card at the moment - waiting for all the
BTX design stuff to start before splashing out on a new system.
 >> Stay informed about: Will it work?