As I've read the Celeron is not a gaming CPU, however I would have thought Age of Mythology would run better on my new computer. It ran ok on my older system, but seemed a little slow at times, saving took forever. (Old computer is an athlon 650 with 128 ram running 98se) On the new 2 ghz celeron it runs a lot slower and choppier. Both have a 32mb video, old has AGP ATI card, new is built in S3 ProSavage8. Would adding more ram to the new system make the game work better? I assume that WinXp is utilizing more of the ram than 98 does and that is part of the problem as both systems have the same amount of ram. At some point I may plop in an AGP card for the new machine, but ram is cheaper than a video card. Would that help, or is my new computer just never going to be good for games?

I would suggest adding more RAM, as XP needs a minimum of 128, preferably more when gaming. I don't know much about that S3 video card, but you say it is onboard, I suggest buying an AGP card. Onboard cards often take from the system RAM, so you say you're onboard card is 32 MB, well that leaves 96 MB of RAM for the OS and other background apps. 96MB! You should consider upgrading if you want decent gaming performance.

You have a lot of strikes against you...

1. the Celeron is not a good gaming CPU

2. 128mb RAM is the minimum to run XP, 256mb is better, 512mb is the "sweet spot"

3. for the most part, onboard video sucks, especially for gaming. And since it takes it's memory from the system RAM, you're in effect, running XP with just 96mb RAM (128 - 32)

If you want decent gaming performance in XP, upgrade your RAM to 512mb & get a decent ATI or nVidia based AGP video card with at least 64mb memory.

If you don't have the money for that right now, go back to Win98SE

Thanks for your responses. I will definately add more ram and maybe a video card soon.
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Ok, I've been researching and I am considering these two ATI cards. Which is better and Why? Radeon 9200 128MB AGP or the Radeon 9600 SE 128MB? Now I know that the Radeon 9600 is probably better (it's more expensive) but how much of a performance boost would I see in the better card? Keep in mind that both of these cards are 8x and I only have a 4x slot, and would be running this with a Celeron.

Save yourself a few $$...the 9600se isn't any better than the 9200, except the 9600se has DX9 support. Get the 9200. The cards are both compatiable with a 4x AGP slot/board. Good Luck.

The 9600SE may support DX9, but it's a 64-bit card. Whatever you get, make sure it's 128-bit. Watch out for cards with LE or SE in their name, those are usually stripped down versions.

Thank you for your help. I had some Gateway Moola Points, so I decided to get the Radeon 9200 and a 512MB stick of Ram. Hope this helps.
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