If you take your fan out you will burn your videocard. The fan is there to cool the video chip, not to annoy you
 
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Supermicro P6DBE Rev 3.1 Motherboard
Dual Intel Pentium III 850
512 MEGS of ECC RAM
Sound Blaster Live!
Adaptec 29160 SCSI Card
GeForce 2 GTS 64MB
IBM DMVS18N Ultra 160 Hard Drive
Seagate Cheetah X-15 ST318451LW Ultra 160 SCSI Hard Drive
Razer Boom Slang 2000 (USB)
Roland Sound Canvis SC-55
3COM 3CR990-TX-97 with 3XP Processor 10/100 PCI Network Interface Card
Plextor Plexwriter 12/4/32
Pioneer 10X DVD-ROM
Sony GDM-F500R Monitor

I have heard of people doing that before, especially since some of them were fairly cheesy. Some people were removing the fan and replacing it with one off of a 486 or something similar, and having great success with it. Try the overclocking sites for more info. Something to think about though, is if the cost of doing it (buying the fan, getting thermally conducting adhesive, time, aggrivation, etc) gets close to $50, then just get another card. I read somewhere on this board that GeForce MX cards can be had for $90 or so. With that, you get a huge improvement in performance.
 
------------------
Regards,
 
clutch

Very good point Clutch... thanks!!!
 
I've been trying to decide between buying a new video card, or processor. I have a Pentium 2 450 @ 504 right now and I would like to get a Pentium III 800 (100mhz) and overclock it to 900. I know I'm gonna get a reply telling me to go AMD, but I don't want to buy a new Motherboard and new RAM right now.
 
Lemme ask.... In Quake 3, with my current setup, I'm getting only 37fps in 16bit/16bit 1024X768, lightmap, 3rd detail settings. I would like to be getting close to 70fps (or at least in the 60s). Will my processor do this? If my processor is not an obstacle.. perhaps I should just get the video card.
 
I guess i'm just wondering how much my processor plays a role, or if fps is dependant more on the video card. So, which should I buy, processor or video card? I know that an increase in processor speed will not increase game performance if my video card sux... but I don't want to spend the dough for a great video card and have it be limited by my processor... anyways, you get the idea.
 
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---Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.---
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Pentium II 450@504 4.5X112
256MB PC100 SDRAM
Diamond Viper V770 Ultra
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Seagate 13.6 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66
Western Digital 13.4 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66
Quantum 8.3 Gig
36X Acer CD Rom
Viewsonic PS790 19" Sweet as Heck Monitor
3Com NIC
Lexmark 5700 Printer
http://sandoval.dynip.com
**********************************************

You're gonna love this then. With my Cel 300A@450 (using NT4) I would get about 60FPS at 8x6x16 with my Viper 770U. When I got my GeForce2 Pro, I put my regular GeForce SDR in the same box, and now I hover in the 90's at the same res. In addition, I *think* it ran in the 60's at the settings you are using. Now, if you can get an old DDR or an MX, I think you will get what you are looking for. The TNT2U seems to become the bottleneck at around 400-450MHz, and the GeForce1 SDR seems to cap at 650-700 (with the settings I use). I have my 800 right now, and I know it's not close to topping out my GTS Pro. I would just get another card, and then use the TNT2U on an old system for guests. That's what I did.
 
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Regards,
 
clutch

Oh, and one more thing, Q3 is more card dependant while UT is more CPU dependant. The only time that I think I noticed an improvement when going from the cel 450 to a P3 600 was smoother performance when running bots.
 
------------------
Regards,
 
clutch

Um, from what it sounded like you have a bunch of cards!! Ya know, if you have a spare GeForece laying around... I would be GLAD to take it off your hands!! Trust me, it really would'nt be a problem!
 
Anyways... you said that you got in the 60fps range with your "old" system using 800X600X16bit. Well, I'm now using 800X600X16bit on my Pentium II 504 and I'm only getting 41 fps (with the FOV on 90)
 
Anyways, I guess I'm just wondering how in the heck you got that many fps... I'm using the same stuff as you did!!
 
 
 
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**********************************************
---Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.---
**********************************************
Pentium II 450@504 4.5X112
256MB PC100 SDRAM
Diamond Viper V770 Ultra
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Seagate 13.6 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66
Western Digital 13.4 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66
Quantum 8.3 Gig
36X Acer CD Rom
Viewsonic PS790 19" Sweet as Heck Monitor
3Com NIC
Lexmark 5700 Printer
http://sandoval.dynip.com
**********************************************

It just depends on what you want to do with the game. Initially (at the time I did that timedemo) I turned off the gun view, went to a simple console (no 3D icons), turned off ejecting brass (no visible weapon, so you don't really need it), no marks on walls, and no gibs. These were all things that just flat "got in the way" and were annoying. I use the same settings on my main system even now (and I got 105fps running 1024x768@32bit).
 
Now, however, I have changed how I play. I was on my usual server, and this guy shows up and starts canning everyone in sight. This was on a 1.27 server, so we thought that an aimbot was out of the question. I went to spectate him, and sure enough he was legit. One guy kept calling him a bot, and a couple of us said he wasn't. Well, this guy was cK-fatal1ty and it turns out he is one of the top players in the world. My friend and I wanted to know more about him, and found this site:
 
www.xsreality.com.
 
 
They have quite a few demos of him there, and we read up on how they play. Now, I use an FOV of 120, and I dropped the res to 800x600@16 and most of the options turned off. Now, for the point of this story...
 
1. Dropping to 8x6x16 didn't increase the fps. This is because at the res I am CPU limited. HOWEVER, in extreme instances (like 7 people in one area punding each other with rockets) my fps doesn't drop below 80fps.
 
2. Keeping a lock on the fps at certain rates gives improved movement. After seeing this fps average staying so high, I locked it at 75fps. It turns out that there are several "sweet spots" in framerate that allow you to expose flaws in the physics of the game engine. This should illustrate that you have more life with your current CPU/mobo combo. You should be able to do the same with your setup depending on the avg fps you get on the levels you play. Here is a link that explains it further:
 
http://ucguides.savageuniverse.com/Quake3/FAQFPSJumps.html
 
Yeah, I know, I strayed from the initial topic a bit. But at least you got some really worthless information to work with...
 

 
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Regards,
 
clutch
 
[This message has been edited by clutch (edited 15 January 2001).]