Hi,

I bought a new video card, an ATI Radeon 8500 64 MB, but somehow it performs worse than my Voodoo 2. Now I know the card itself is ok, so the problem must be with my computer. Now I was thinking, since I'm using a 235 W power plant could it be that the radeon is actually not getting enough power and that's why doesnt perform as well as it should? Or when the power is insufficient should the entire system not be able to function?

Since your CPU is only 300mhz, you may not have the computing power to back up a *new* video card such as a Radeon 8500.
Upgrade your motherboard, RAM, and CPU.

I may be wrong but that would be my guess.

Yes I understand that because of my relatively slow CPU I can not get everything out of my vide card, but I would say that this radeon is a little bit faster than a voodoo 2 and as far as I understand it the point in building 3d accelerators is to get the cpu to perform LESS?

True, but unfortunately there are a LOT of factors determining how your Video card is going to perform.

examples: (In no particular order)

1) Amount of RAM
2) Amount of Video RAM
3) Memory bandwidth
4) CPU speed
5) GPU speed
6) GPU memory bandwidth
7) AGP speed (or PCI if that is what you use
8) Driver used
etc...

I would guess that even though it is a better card it may perfprm far under par if nothing in your system has the ability to push it to it's max. Kinda like having a Porsche Gembala Avalanche capable of 190 mph stuck in the slow lane during rush hour... No matter how hard you push on the pedal yer just gonna push the guy in front of you into the guy in front of him and so on... ;)