I just ordered a Celeron 2.4Ghz and I have Geforce 4 Mx400. People have been telling me that Celerons suck. Im a screwed or what? I want to be able to play all the high end games like Need For Speed Underground and Lord of the Rings. Return of the King.
Also, my mother board comes with an ONBOARD video card installed I think. I still have 1 AGP and 4 PCIs left. Can I still put my Geforce 4 in and install? Im asking this because I havent received my PC yet.
1. Well to my knowledge, the GF4MX400 didnt ship as onboard (it was the GF4MX420 that came was onboards). Not a big deal. 2. How much memory do you have? Harddrive? 3. Celerons do suck but only really because you could have probably gotten more performance for your buck if you had got something say like a Barton2500. 4. IMO, I dont think its the Celeron that will hold you back but rather the video card and potentially the rest of the subsystem as well as how well you optimized (or not) your system is. 2.4Ghz is nothing to shy from even if it is a Celeron. All in all I dont think you will be able to play NFSU or ROTK too well but not because of the cpu (btw, the controls for ROTK are horrible arghhhhhhhhhhh!)
you should be fine. a 2.4Ghz pc is still a 2.4Ghz pc no matter what processor is installed. you should have no problems with installing the other graphics card. the pc should recognise the card when installed into the AGP slot, presumeably you aren't using win98 or lower
Thanks guys. I was really sweating for a minute. Cost me 169 on for the barebone Computer Celeron 2.4 Ghz.The main purpose was to upgrade from my P3 448 Mhz system.I could have just purchased the processor chip, but was skeptical about how difficult the procedure would be swapping out processors. I had 80 Gig, 384Mb Ram. I just purchased the Geforce 4 440MX. The onboard Video card on mobo of new Computer is crappy.
If that was true a 2.4 Ghz Celeron should perform close to a 2.4 Ghz P4, but all test show that is not true. Also, an athlon should not be able to compete with the P4, but test have also shown that an Athlon at a lower clock speed can compete with a chip that is 600 - 1000 Mhz faster. Not to mention an MX card is not the best for graphic intensive programs such as games. There is a lot more to CPU power than the Mhz behind it. Any educated (or a person willing to do a little research before buying would know). $169 is not a bad deal for a business machine to run office apps or the internet though. Maybe if you upgrade that video card to a Geforce 4 TI or a Geforce FX it might do a little better. Just my opinion (based on facts)
Those games should be playable with a Celeron, but a true P4 or Athlon would be faster. The main difference in the Celeron vs P4 is the amount on onboard cache. The Celerons just have 128k where a P4 will have 512k. That increases the speed quite a bit since the processor doesn't have to cross the bus to access the data in RAM if it is cached onboard. I would agree that you might see more of a speed increase by changing the video card from a Geforce MX400. I think the MX cards are the ones that use shared memory which would be slower, and also don't have as big a memory pipeline as the TIs or FX cards, or even the ATI Radeons.
