P3 with lots o slots or P4 with no slots, newbie Help!

[EOppie]

Hey guys, I have been picking up pieces here and there for my first setup, but now I am at a bit of a crossroads.

I have a P4 and a P3 computer, the P4 is an old compaq EVO, compact desktop type case. It only has two PCI slots for expansion...

The P3 is an old computer I had, that is in a big case, lots o PCI slots.

I know that the wiki says the P3 can run the software fine, however will I notice a big jump using the P4? I guess I could always bite the bullet and buy a mobo and processor, however I am trying to avoid that.

I have a new Video Card, New Sound Card, and an older TV Capture card. All say they will play nice with either system.

What do people recommend, especially for my first system?

[sub]

What speed are these two processors, and what videocard do you have?

[EOppie]

I will boot them up to check their speeds...think slow oldness

Here are the specs on the video and audio cards:

Razer Barracuda AC-1 Sound Card
Features:
Razer ESP (Enhanced Sonic Perception), expands the range of hearing in-game sounds to allow gamers to pinpoint the exact location of kill zones. Hear your opponent before you see them.
Powered by Razer Fidelity, 117dB signal to noise ratio (output) with a 7.1 channel 24-bit audio output.
Passive EMI shield, prevents interference from other PC components
Razer 3D (720°) positional gaming audio engine. Pin point specific audio sound cues in game.
Razer HD-DAI (High Definition-Dedicated Audio Interface), eliminates the need for 4 audio mini-jack, and USB port.

Technical Specifications:

Razer Fidelity™ gaming audio engine
S/PDIF receiver/transmitter
Dolby® Prologic IIx surround processor
Dolby® Digital Live 5.1 hardware encoder
Dolby® Headphone technology
Dolby® Virtual Speaker
DTS® NeoPC
DTS® Interactive real-time hardware encoder
7.1-channel digital audio playback
Supports EAX™ 2.0, Aureal3D™ 1.0 and DirectSound
Audio Characteristics

Signal-to-noise ratio (output): 117dB
Frequency response (at 24-bit / 96KHz): 20~20,000Hz
Dynamic range: 116dB
Total harmonic distortion + noise: -97dB
Simultaneous voices: ≤ 128
Supports the following audio technology:

DTS NeoC
DTS Interactive
Dolby Headphone
Dolby Digital Live
Dolby Digital Pro Logic IIx
System Requirements

Pentium® II 350MHz, AMD® K6 450 MHz or Higher
One Available PCI 2.1/2.2 Slot
128 RAM Memory or Higher
At least 55MB of Hard Disk Space
Graphic Display at 800 x 600 High Color (16 bit)
CD ROM Drive
Headphones or Amplified Speakers
Windows 98SE / ME / 2000 / XP / MCE
Audio Connections Supported:

Razer High Definition-Dedicated Audio Interfac (HD-ADI) Connector
CD-in
Aux-in (CD-in 2)
S/PDIF Optical In
S/PDIF Optical Out
Front Panel Connector


Video Card:ATI Radeon X600SE 128mb PCI Express Video Card
Features:


Native x16 lane PCI Express
Double the bandwidth of AGP 8X
Increased memory bandwidth to 12 Gigabytes/sec.
Four extreme parallel 3D rendering pixel pipelines
Two programmable vertex shader pipelines
128-bit memory interface supporting 128MB DDR1 memory
Full DirectX® 9 support
Includes DVI-to-VGA adapter

[stustunz]

whats the tuner card yo have?

audio doesnt really matter any sound card will do
video card has to be able to do direct x9 although overlay now works again so you can get away with less
so that video card will do

if you have a slow machine but reasonable video card that can do hardware acceleration then it will work

the best thing to do is just load it up and try it

[daveid]

your video card will not work in your old machines, as it is pci-e which is very different from pci.

[EOppie]

your video card will not work in your old machines, as it is pci-e which is very different from pci.

Well the Compaq should be able to handle it, however it does have limited expansion possibility.

I had hoped the video card would work since it has S-Video out, and that is the way I had planned on displaying the output to the TV.

The jury is still out on that critical piece of equipment, a tuner.

I have what I believe is an old All in Wonder...however I know those don't like to play nice.

I have another tuner card in another tower, just need to get it out and check.

I have no problem simply buying a tuner card as well since that is not too expensive...and somewhat important to the system!

[daveid]

if the compaq only has pci slots, you can not use a pci-express video card in it, sorry, but they are two very different technologies. and since you said this was an old system, the chances of it having a pci-express slot are slim.