CPU advice for 3D

[littleberry]

Do I have a Prescott? I got Fry's special a few months ago which was a P4 w/motherboard. The Pentium is 533 FSB, 512 kb l2 cache, socket 478, running out of the box at 2.53 ghz. The bundled motherboard is the ECS l4vxa2. It works fine and I have no complaints - doenn't get hot. Today Fry's has a sale for the athon 64 3200+ with mboard (they don't say what kind - it has audio onboard and SATA) for $189. That sure seems like a good price - my question is this: will it improve on my ability to rotate and manipulte 3d objects, using the free 3dbrowser, and using both ac3d and max6 to generate new 3d objects? The reason I ask is that I also have an older 1 ghz P3 to which I compared my new 2.53 P4 with, and I can definitely see an improvement as the 3d objects I load get more triangles. The old 1 ghz will not keep up when there are several thousand triangles (it jumps as I move the mouse in rotate or pan mode). But the 2.53 ghz P$ keeps up until I load 3d objects that are even more thousands of triangles - then it starts to jump somewhat. Will the 64 3200+ perform noticebly better? Or is it more the video card than the cpu? Both video cards are normal 128 mg type standard cards (sub $100 price range). I see that this ability to keep up (both in smooth and wireframe mode) when rotating, panning, and zooming a 3d object is of key value when one wants to demonstrate a complicated 3d object - so, a better perfoming setup is worth looking into. I am running both win98se and win2000 (for max6). Thanks, littleberry

 

[dunklegend]

It's probably more the video card than the CPU.
I have an Nvidia Quadro NVS 280 PCI card, and I use it for 2D work but other guys here use it for 3D stuff, they use unigraphics and Pro e. These cards perform well for that kind of job but I doubt that they are cheap.


Nothing is as easy as it looks

 

[endyen]

Going to the A64 would be almost as good an upgrade as going from the P3 to the P4, but spending the same money on a graphics card would be better. You may be able to get a 6600 pro card for about the same. Check in the graphics forum for recommendations.

 

[littleberry]

I am very tempted to get that athlon (sale ends tomorrow)and I appreciate the replies. By the way, how can I tell what kind of P4 I currently have (2.53 ghz is not in the cpu list - 1st thread).
Since it doesn't get hot at all, I am thinking it is not a prescott - is there a way to tell?

 

[endyen]

You have a Northwood, P4b. It needs a little more memory bandwidth, but all in all, it's an all right chip.