Does video card make a difference in Windows XP?

[ShawnD1]

I just assembled a new computer out of old parts I had laying around.
Pentium 2 350mhz
320mb PC100 ram (256 + 64)
GeForce Ti200
6gb slow hard drive (don't know the specs)
D-Link LAN card

I put Windows XP on this computer which is the same as what I have on a celeron computer of mine clocked at 500 i think it is with an old Radeon video card. According to that benchmarking tool, Sandra, my celeron should be faster than my P2. The complete opposite is true though. With the celeron, I will close everything that I don't need and even turn off the background wallpaper and it still cannot play a video file and be able to keep the audio and video in sync. My P2 is now running all default windows crap (nothing turned off) and it is able to play perfectly syncronized videos at around 80% CPU usage.

The main difference between the computers is the graphics card. Is the GeForce2 what is making my P2 so much faster than my Celeron or is Sandra just wrong in this case?

[SeanC]

Hey Shawn,

Actually the main difference is the Celercon and P2 CPU's. The P2 has extra cache that the Celeron doesn't. Remember the Celeron's were designed as the value PC. Even at 500mhz the Celeron doesn't have enough clock speed to make up the difference.

Sean