Gateway Essential 500 upgrade path \ VOGONS

Gateway Essential 500 upgrade path

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First post, by Zukovsky

Posted on 2026-05-07, 13:51

Zukovsky Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 8
Joined: 2024-01-31, 19:53

Hi all,

I have a gateway essential 500, intel PIII 500Mhz, 324mb RAM, GeForce FX5900XT

I'm looking to upgrade as I just installed Delta Force and it kinda of chugs. I understand this game is CPU heavy.

So should I upgrade to the fastest possible 100fsb cpu, which is 800Mhz

Buy a new board and a Tualatin (cost $200)

Will going for the full tilt setup yield noticeable improvements in most games, is a Tualatin absolutely needed for late Win98 gaming?

Reply 1 of 1, by bofh.fromhell

Posted on 2026-05-07, 19:41

bofh.fromhell Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 562
Joined: 2019-02-09, 16:11

Tualatin might be fun and all, but as with much retro hardware it doesn't really make and sense price/performance wise.
If you wanna build something fun that also runs Delta Force as a champ (remember its voxel graphics and not accelerated) you could just go the Athlon XP route or even an 64 model.
Such an upgrade would also match your GPU a lot better =)
But, as you suggest, finding the fastest CPU your current motherboard supports might be the simplest solution.
Also 800MHz indicates it supports Coppermine so it should also (maby unofficially) support up to 1100MHz if you can find one.

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