I have a PC based on the intel al440lx motherboard, I am using a Pentium II 266 and 64Mb of PC100 RAM (running at 66Mhz), a 3Gb Maxtor HD, a 56x CDrom drive and the graphics card was a... SiS 6326 PCI card with very poor performance in any 3D game. So I decided to get a good old AGP card to improve the performance of the system in games like Need For Speed and the like.
The I got a nvidia TNT2 generic AGP board so I installed it on my PC, everything was OK, I dumped the SiS and installed the drivers for the TNT2, I tried some games and the performance was excellent (both in picture quality and FPS) but after using the computer for two hours the system hanged no less than twelve times! So I took out the TNT2, replaced it for the SiS and the system recovered its excellent reliability and stability. Shall I try another TNT2 board or another graphics chipset (ATI, Voodoo)? Is it a better idea to go for another CPU or more ram? will a Pentium II 333 perform significantly better than a 266?
By the way there were no hardware conflicts in Win 98 when i used the TNT2 and I removed all other add-in cards just in case but the system kept on hanging specially in the win 98 desktop, not so much running games.

Hi,

After 2 hours of game play and the card performs well and then it begins to act erratic would be an indication that either the card or another component is overheating. Granted, the system you have is not anything of late and lacks the robust requirements needed today.

What types of games do you play?

As far as swapping out the CPU, the perfomance gain would be negligible and not worth the time and or money spent. An increase of RAM would be the only upgrade that would appear to be worthwhile.

As far as gaming is concerned, I would stick to games that are of that era (circa 1998).

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I agree with TONY...sounds like an overheating problem. And more RAM will significantly increase performance, not only in gaming, but in EVERYTHING!

This space for rent

i agree that it sounds like overheating,but it might be worth trying some different drivers just in case. I think nvidia site has an archive for older versions of drivers.
and I agree that more ram will be better. ram like this is now REALLY cheap for used sticks (except for 256mb sticks which cost a lot). eg. in UK you could probably get 2 x 64mb sticks on ebay for £2.50.
I reckon a CPU upgrade is worthwhile as one of those Slot 1 66fsb 333 mhz processors on ebay would probably be less than £5 on ebay. The chances are it should be compatible - but not 100% certain.
It would be a 25% increase in processor power.
Now I know it would still be a slow old system but at least it would be less slow, for very little extra money.

I think they stopped support for Voodoo, I didn't even realize anybody still sold them. So, that isn't one option that I'd choose. The last thing you'd want to get is a graphics card or chipset with no updatable support for.
The RAM is definitely a bonus in way of performance, adding more that is. I don't know much about overheating video cards so I can't give you my two cents there.

I would say use Motherboard Monitor, but I doubt a PC that old has the diodes available for heat detection. I could be wrong though, and very well might be... But MBM would be able to tell you if your components are nearing those too-high temps where lock-up occurs. The best thing to do would be to look around on the net for new drivers.

Back in the day I had a Diamond Monster Fusion (Voodoo Banshee chip-base) card that had all sorts of problems with the drivers. I had to use a 3rd party driver and after that, my card rocked, for the times anyways.

So, my suggestion would be to find new drivers. Also, looking around to see what the system specs required for your card are would be a good idea. It may be that your card is putting undue strain on your system. If that is the case and your GPU requires a minimum of 266, then upgrading to a 333 would be a good idea. More RAm is always a good thing and as was stated above is [i]really[/i] cheap nowadays. There is no reason why you shouldn't be kicking 128MB RAM.

My old sys, in case you care, though I doubt you do ;) is;
366cpu, 96MB RAM, 32MB Diamond Monster Fusion (Banshee chipset) PCI VGA, 48X CD-ROM, all inside an E-machines tower. I had to replace EVERYTHING in that tower except the mobo and cpu. EVERYTHING else failed. The onboard video (ATI Rage), original RAM, original HD, CD-ROM, PSU, 3.25" floppy drive, even the mouse... though the keyboard did work and works even today. As a matter of fact I'm typing on it now!

One other thing... given how much better made chips for 366's and such were after things moved up to the 1Ghz range you could probably overclock your 333 to 366 or maybe even higher. A brief perusing through an overclocking forum could yield some fantastic results that would give you more bang for your buck. For example; my Celeron D 2.4Ghz is VERY comfortably clocked at 3Ghz with a Thermaltake all Cu heatsink. MBM shows a mere 3°F change from default to OC.

Hi again:
I know I am struggling with an old system, my idea is to get a cheap increase in performance while I get the necesary money to buy a decent system. By the way I trying am compatible games (NFS3,NFS4, GTA2, AoK, etc.) When I tried the card the problems started just after I powered on the system, everything was cool then and the card has a heatsink/fan, the problems are not related to insufficient heat dissipation ( I was using the system with the case open in a well ventilated enviroment)thank you all for your help. Ill get some RAM and another graphics card to try and see.