I've got a PCchips M810LR motherboard with an athlon xp1700 running at 1.4ghz. 256MB SDRAM 133mhz and an Nvidia Geforce 2 MX-200 and a system FSB at 266mhz. I'm using Windows ME. Anyway, because a few games i have, ie. GTA 3, tend to be running at a terrible framerate, which is also sometimes experienced with a few other games, even slightly older ones. I have the latest detanator drivers for my geforce and the latest Bios update for my motherboard. I was wondering whether it would be worth overclocking the CPU at all? If so, could u gimme a few ideas as to how much i should increase it by. Thanks

Well, i think you mean 1.47Ghz, because the Athlon XP 1600 is at 1.4Ghz. Anyway, your cpu isn't the problem, its your video card. What you want to do is get a descent video card tweaking program such as Power Strip or NVmax 4 and start overclocking your GPU core and memory. If you experience any problems such as empty poligons or it just restarts, try downclocking it a bit.

Ok....FIRST OF ALL....disregard what the other person said.... you should relaly look at u're choice of operating systems.... If you want to play games..especialy with the card u have...go back to windows 98...it does not require as much ram...and works great with games... I have windows Xp..but i also have DDR ram...so that is why i can't ask u to switch... Do what the other guy said baout the overclocking...but use RIVA TOONER instead..its for ure vid card overclock... and just play around with the clock speed...but don't set it too high (remember ram overclocks easyer then core) Enjoy..and i hope i helped you a little... ;c-)

Windows 95, 98, and ME are all basically the same. Each one is a continuation of from the other, so your best off with ME. As for ram, your fine and it wont make a difference on which operating system you are using, as long as its windows 95,98, or ME. Riva Tuner isn't my favourite overclocking program due to its lack in persistancy, it has a nice feature which allows you to test your system to see which range of clock frequencies are stable, BUT it's much more difficult to overclock. Your computer will tend to crash often. Also, make sure you have the latest nvidia detonator drivers, for your video card, it is best optimized with the 28.32 drivers. You can get these drivers here www.guru3d.com. You also want to update your motherboard drivers ESPECIALLY if you have a VIA chipset. These chipsets seemed to have problems with nvidia, therefore it is essential that you update. For GTA3, if you disable verticle sync you will get a dramatic boost in framerate. Verticle sync only pre-renders the next 4-5 frames and stores it in a buffer. This is only to prevent artifacts along the vertices of objects (which rarely happens). And as for hitman up there, I happen to know him and he thinks he knows everything and ends up being wrong in just about everything. Well, doing all this should help you and give you 5-10 fps increase. ENJOY :D

All decent advice, but overclocking that graphics card is not even worth it. Get a new one if at all possible. You can get a Radeon 8500 for about $100 and a Geforce 4 ti 4200 for about $150. Also, I recommend upgrading to Win 2000 or XP. You don't need DDR memory for XP. I didn't. My friends laptop doesn't. You should be perfectly fine with the RAM you have. People might tell you Windows 2000 isn't for gamers, but I'm a gamer, and refuse to use anything based on the 9x core. I use 2000 because Win XP gets expensive due to product activation and when your running like 5 comps... well you get the idea. But if you have either one or two comps, I would recommend a Win XP Home upgrade edition.

I would get the new videocard. I have a Geforce2MX400, and it is horrible at anti-aliasing. You definetly have the power, your bottleneck is the GPU. Get a newer Geforce card with at least 64MB of VRAM.

Thanks for the advice, i really appreciate it... yeah, i thought it might be my GPU. Its got 64 MB ram...but then again...it doesnt always come down to that. I used powerstrip, but then im also not sure what would be a safe level of mhz. I'll try out a few progs that you all recommended. thanks.