Trust me when I say this, graphics is important, dont cripple a good CPU with a lousy complimentary card.
Tech talk:-
a Graphics card mounts a GPU(graphics processor unit) like a motherboard mounts a CPU(central processor unit)
this GPU is designed to perform calculations on multiple Data at a time(in some cases it may go upto 16 different sets of data), the pentium-3 at best can do just 4 using it SSE instruction set, so a GPU( the worst of the lot like a GF4MX) will still be faster than the best p-3/p-4/Athlon around.
So under any case its best to perform graphics transformation( and other stuff that benefits from computing on multiple data at once)on a GPU
So if u go buy the fastest CPU, it wont matter because microsoft DirectX targets all code towards the GPU and not the CPU.
Also Microsoft implements OpenGL v1.0 that targets the CPU(so GPU is not required?).well OpenGL v1.0 is shitty, if u wanna use anything better(like OpenGL v1.3) ull ve to buy the implentation from companies like nVidia, Intel, ATI which all target code to their respective GPUs
Also u might want to look at the fuctionality, T&L interface is no longer supported in DirectX9.0 so if the GPU does not support it, DirectX will emulate it, though it ll run a lot faster if it had it(ll run faster).
More importantly do look for Pixel shader support, this is one functionality that allows DirecX9.0 users to write code fragments to manupilate texture at different texture stages and is fast becoming a standard and NO-IT CANT BE EMULATED, attempt to emulate it and ull have to shunt all texture manupilations in SOFTWARE which will kill the speed
let me know if this article helped
mail me at asif_bahrainwala@hotmail.com