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Morrowind on a P3 800

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First post, by jmej_jmej

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I have a slot 1 system that currently has a geforce 4 mx440 in it, alongside a coppermine p3 800. Win98se

Morrowind struggles to approach playability.

Is it worth upgrading my video card to a geforce 2 GT or geforce 4 ti4200? Given the slow cpu is one of these likely to perform better?

I'm basically happy with performance on everything else I want to play on this rig - and the geforce 2 GTS is appealing for it's period correctness - but morrowind is really the only reason for an upgrade - and if it isn't likely to make much difference I might just skip it.

I'm not looking for 60fps or anything, even 20-30 would be a big improvement.

Reply 1 of 3, by Imperious

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Googling around a bit, it appears the mx440 is more powerful than a Gf2 GTS.
I might give this a go tonight. I've been messing about with a new chinese socket 370 motherboard and have currently got a Celeron 900@1200mhz with a 440mx in it.

A ti4200 will definitely perform better but the 800mhz cpu will be a bit of a bottleneck.

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Reply 2 of 3, by Trashbytes

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jmej_jmej wrote on 2025-05-16, 00:01:
I have a slot 1 system that currently has a geforce 4 mx440 in it, alongside a coppermine p3 800. Win98se […]
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I have a slot 1 system that currently has a geforce 4 mx440 in it, alongside a coppermine p3 800. Win98se

Morrowind struggles to approach playability.

Is it worth upgrading my video card to a geforce 2 GT or geforce 4 ti4200? Given the slow cpu is one of these likely to perform better?

I'm basically happy with performance on everything else I want to play on this rig - and the geforce 2 GTS is appealing for it's period correctness - but morrowind is really the only reason for an upgrade - and if it isn't likely to make much difference I might just skip it.

I'm not looking for 60fps or anything, even 20-30 would be a big improvement.

Ok take it from an old hand with this game .. you want a decent GPU for this game .. ignore the specs they list for it, its the gamebyro engine here before they overhauled it to become the creation engine, its going to be a dog for performance.

I ran it back in the day on some really horrible GPUs and pretty much had to rely on performance tools to get it running at 30 FPS, once I got a Radeon 9600 XT the game became so much better to the point the performance tools actually helped a ton in stopping the engine from rendering garbage it doesn't need to.

I moved to a HD2600 XT a bit later and it ran the game just fine without the tools and some ini tweaks were all that was needed.

So yes you will need a good GPU for it, the gamebyro engine was and still is garbage .. to think it was used to run Starfield disguised as the Creation engine.

The CPU is a different matter, its going to hold you back but with a good GPU its impact wont be as big as it will be with a bad GPU, throw the Ti4200 in there itll do better with Morrowind than the GF2 will.

Last edited by Trashbytes on 2025-05-16, 00:48. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 3, by Trashbytes

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Imperious wrote on 2025-05-16, 00:26:

Googling around a bit, it appears the mx440 is more powerful than a Gf2 GTS.
I might give this a go tonight. I've been messing about with a new chinese socket 370 motherboard and have currently got a Celeron 900@1200mhz with a 440mx in it.

A ti4200 will definitely perform better but the 800mhz cpu will be a bit of a bottleneck.

MX440 only appear to be that way, in truth its not, it lacks hardware shaders that the GTS has, the MX440 is really just an overclocked GF2 MX400.