[Fineus]

Hello all...

I've been out of the computer building/upgrading scene for a while now since the advent of PCI-Express for graphics cards.

However the time to upgrade has come again - and unsuprisingly money is a factor. Unfortunately from what I gather it's going to be an expensive process this time around. Hence me asking here...

I want to upgrade to an AMD 939 socket, PCI-Express graphics and motherboard. I already have RAM and a sound card (and I presume nothing else has really changed). As this is just a "step up" I'm not too bothered about a massive performance increase. This is merely to get me onto the current level of tect. Right now I have an AGP 8x motherboard and therefore can't upgrade my graphics or processor to anything worthwhile in future without upgrading the motherboard as well.

Of course, I'm looking to do this as cheaply as possible. The end result must be a machine that can be further upgraded in the future but be no less powerful now than my existing 2.4GHz machine with Radeon 9800 Pro.

Cheers!

[Kosh]

What will you do with your old machine? Send it my way maybe?

[Fineus]

Hah!

No, my father needs to upgrade his Pentium 2 350MHz. Yes, you heard me right. It really is that crap.

He'll be getting this machine

[Kosh]

Dang, well I had to try.


A P2 350 MHZ? That's better than some of the machines at my old high school.

[Fury]

The end result must be a machine that can be further upgraded in the future but be no less powerful now than my existing 2.4GHz machine with Radeon 9800 Pro.

Is that Intel or AMD CPU? Personally, I would simply upgrade the CPU (unless it is AMD Athlon 64) and buy either Radeon 850 Pro or Radeon 800XL. And if you have less than 1GB RAM, get more.

I was pretty much in the same situation as you are now. My rig was AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB RAM and Radeon 9800XT. I only bought Radeon 850 Pro and I got very nice performance improvement over 9800XT.

[vyper]

How do you people afford this at Christmas?

[Fineus]

I don't... but I need to start thinking about it this year.

Mr Fury.. I'm on an Intel system at the moment but am not especially bothered between Intel and AMD (although Intel seems a lot quieter/more stable than the AMD chip I had before it).

Is it worth upgrading to another AGP card... rather than the obvious step up to what seems to be the next generation of graphics/motherboard interfaces? I'd rather be on that rung at the low end and work my way up than be stuck at the top of the last gen cycle...

[redmenace]

How do you people afford this at Christmas?

Maybe he doesn't have a girlfriend. That is a wonderful way to save cash. Personally, that is my method. I don't drink either which helps personally.

[Stealth]

you want a socket 939 and PCI-express capable board?

Get the ASUS A8N32-SLI.  it's an awesome board.  i built my computer two weeks ago, and haven't had any problems since

[CP5670]

Coincidentally, I finally recieved the last item for my new machine last night, a DFI SLI-DR motherboard. I'm running stability tests now. No issues yet, although I am expecting certain problems to arise with that board. Hopefully everything will be good to go by tomorrow night.

Is it worth upgrading to another AGP card... rather than the obvious step up to what seems to be the next generation of graphics/motherboard interfaces? I'd rather be on that rung at the low end and work my way up than be stuck at the top of the last gen cycle...

I would advise against it at this point. Unfortunately, last year's high end AGP cards have been phased out and aren't dropping in price anymore, just becoming hard to find. There are much better deals for video cards on PCIE at the moment and you can get a good PCIE board for under $100 now. Unless you are interested in buying my AGP 6800GT.

Maybe he doesn't have a girlfriend. That is a wonderful way to save cash. Personally, that is my method. I don't drink either which helps personally.

Get the ASUS A8N32-SLI.  it's an awesome board.  i built my computer two weeks ago, and haven't had any problems since

It's ridiculously hard to find that board at a reasonable price. Newegg got 30 in stock on Wednesday evening (after two weeks of OOS) and was sold out in less than a hour, at $35 over MSRP. It's going for over $300 on ebay regularly.

[Fineus]

redmenace: I don't drink as much as I used to, that helps. As for having a girlfriend.. it needn't necessarily be that expensive

Stealth: Cheers, I'll look into it. 2 weeks sure makes it reliable! hehe... though from the sound of what CP5670 is saying it's quite expensive!

Although I'm trying to do this on a budget.. I'm also trying to get something stable for the future. I guess that means the motherboard should be the expensive item and I should get a cheap PCI-E graphics card of comperable power to the Radeon 9800 Pro (maybe slightly better... heh, if the price is right).

[Stealth]

not sure exactly what CP5670's trying to say... i bought mine from Monarch Computers about 3 weeks ago, and got it in under a week.  Monarch has them for $247 (what I paid for it).

It's a great board... nothing but good reviews all around, practically designed for overclocking.

also remember if the board's selling out almost immediately, nad is hard to find, that tells you something about the quality of it

[Stealth]

also, i was kidding when i said i've had it for two weeks   still, it seems pretty good. 

but yeah, i didn't expect to give the impression it's an extremely reliable board   i don't know that by experience

[CP5670]

not sure exactly what CP5670's trying to say... i bought mine from Monarch Computers about 3 weeks ago, and got it in under a week.  Monarch has them for $247 (what I paid for it).

It's a great board... nothing but good reviews all around, practically designed for overclocking.

You must have gotten lucky. It's OOS just about everywhere now. It's a nice board but I definitely wouldn't pay $250 for it. The dual x16 doesn't do much for current cards and there are some limitations; the expansion slot layout is not the best if you want to actually use the SLI functionality and there are considerably better overclocking boards available for less money. I think it's main attraction is the passive cooling, which I would take any day over the little 40mm fans on most boards.

Although I'm trying to do this on a budget.. I'm also trying to get something stable for the future. I guess that means the motherboard should be the expensive item and I should get a cheap PCI-E graphics card of comperable power to the Radeon 9800 Pro (maybe slightly better... heh, if the price is right).

Actually you should go the other way. Get a cheap motherboard and CPU and go heavy on the video card to get the best performance for your money. There are some cheaper boards like the Asus A8R-MVP that perform and overclock nearly as well as the more expensive ones. AMD is also switching to a new socket and DDR2 memory in a couple of months, so you can't really be future proof with motherboards at the moment.

[WMCoolmon]

Unless you are interested in buying my AGP 6800GT.

How much are you asking for it, and what subvariety is it?

[IceFire]

Hello all...

I've been out of the computer building/upgrading scene for a while now since the advent of PCI-Express for graphics cards.

However the time to upgrade has come again - and unsuprisingly money is a factor. Unfortunately from what I gather it's going to be an expensive process this time around. Hence me asking here...

I want to upgrade to an AMD 939 socket, PCI-Express graphics and motherboard. I already have RAM and a sound card (and I presume nothing else has really changed). As this is just a "step up" I'm not too bothered about a massive performance increase. This is merely to get me onto the current level of tect. Right now I have an AGP 8x motherboard and therefore can't upgrade my graphics or processor to anything worthwhile in future without upgrading the motherboard as well.

Of course, I'm looking to do this as cheaply as possible. The end result must be a machine that can be further upgraded in the future but be no less powerful now than my existing 2.4GHz machine with Radeon 9800 Pro.

Cheers!

I'm in the market myself and while I'm doing the research now I don't plan to buy till late Summer 2006.  Here's my suggestions.

1) AMD all the way - the current prices of Intel chips are far too high for the performance numbers they are turning out.  Extreme Edition P4's which cost over $1000 are in a number of gaming related tests scoring less than the slightly above average AMD64 X2 around the $600 mark.  I've seen nothing from Intel in the last 3 years that was really worth jumping onto.  Now that has the possibility of change as Intel is planning to bring out a new P4 core in the new year with things like the 64bit and dual core stuff designed in from the start (supposedly anyways - we'll see!) instead of tacked on like right now.

2) Video Card - a tough call...I like the ATI lineup but I'm less and less enthused about their drivers.  I personally do not like Catalyst Control Center and much prefer the old ATI Control Panel.  As the actual hardware is hit and miss back and forth between nVidia and ATI it seems to me that the deciding factor is price and drivers.  At the moment, Foreceware seems to be less glitzy and just as capable as CCC and that seems to be the deciding factor to me.  Price is also hit and miss...but the GeForce 7800 lineup IS REALLY well priced for its performance VS the X1800 series.  While the GTX is rediculously priced the GT is an excellent card.  If you can wait till the new year...they are slated to fill out the 7000 series cards and they seem to do better than the 6000 series for power consumption and heat as well.

3) RAM - Get at least 1GB...the difference between the expensive paired stuff from Corsair and the generic cheap stuff isn't all that different and I haven't seen much to change my mind on that.  But if you are doing any sort of major system tweaking the more expensive RAM with the head spreaders and all that can make a difference in stability.

4) Soundcard - I'm still researching...X-Fi may or may not be the best choice if you're looking for gaming sound. Otherwise, even the onboard solutions are good enough for the basics.

5) Motherboards - While the new ATI chipsets for AMD look interesting they aren't mature yet.  The nForce 4 seems to be just as good as the nForce 2 was when I bought my current system 3 years ago.

[Roanoke]

I understand an X800GTO is probably the best "mainstream" card at the moment, or the new Geforce 6800GS.
I've got a mag. ATi group test, here's the results:
2.4ghz Athlon 64 4000+, Asus A8N-SLi Delux 1GB RAM (I assume DDR)

X1300Pro 256Mb(£76): HL2 34 fps (@ 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF)
Far Cry 25fps
Fear & CoD2 < 10 fps

X1600XT 256Mb(£120)
HL2 32fps
FarCry 55fps
Fear 23fps
CoD2 15fps

X1800XT 512Mb (£400 )
HL2 91fps
FarCry 57fps
Fear 48fps
CoD2 37fps
 \
Most interestingly they reckon the only benefit of the X1600XT or a X800GTO is Shader Model 3 support. but I duno what that is.

[Stealth]

You must have gotten lucky. It's OOS just about everywhere now. It's a nice board but I definitely wouldn't pay $250 for it. The dual x16 doesn't do much for current cards and there are some limitations; the expansion slot layout is not the best if you want to actually use the SLI functionality and there are considerably better overclocking boards available for less money. I think it's main attraction is the passive cooling, which I would take any day over the little 40mm fans on most boards.

i think it's a great layout for SLI.  you can easily fit a card between the two PCI-Express slots (probably a sound card, because the onboard sound is a joke), but you've got dual gigabit ethernet, and everything else the average user would want.  passive cooling is awesome, and the board comes with a little fan just in case you go with a passive processor cooler, or water-cooling. 

read reviews on it though... this board's designed for performance.  it's so easy to overclock, it almost looks like the BIOS is designed for it

Overall, with a good 10-12 computers i've built, this may not be the cheapest board i've ever bought, in fact it's probably one of the most expensive... only server boards i've paid more for, but go and read some reviews.  but the motherboard is the backbone of your computer... it defines how far you can upgrade it, how far you can push it, and pretty much everything else... and i'd always pay for a GOOD (<-- read) motherboard and power supply than anything else.

plus it's got everything he's looking for, including dual x16 PCI express slots and socket 939   arguably one of the best boards you can buy, price aside

[CP5670]

How much are you asking for it, and what subvariety is it?

It's a BFG card, the blue one with the copper heatsink and a small stock overclock. They go for about $270 used on ebay, but I can sell it cheaper here to people I know. Although I'm actually not sure if I want to sell it or not, since my brother wants me to make him a extra computer for him with this and all the other stuff I pulled out of my old setup.

i think it's a great layout for SLI.  you can easily fit a card between the two PCI-Express slots (probably a sound card, because the onboard sound is a joke), but you've got dual gigabit ethernet, and everything else the average user would want.  passive cooling is awesome, and the board comes with a little fan just in case you go with a passive processor cooler, or water-cooling.

read reviews on it though... this board's designed for performance.  it's so easy to overclock, it almost looks like the BIOS is designed for it

Overall, with a good 10-12 computers i've built, this may not be the cheapest board i've ever bought, in fact it's probably one of the most expensive... only server boards i've paid more for, but go and read some reviews.  but the motherboard is the backbone of your computer... it defines how far you can upgrade it, how far you can push it, and pretty much everything else... and i'd always pay for a GOOD (<-- read) motherboard and power supply than anything else.

plus it's got everything he's looking for, including dual x16 PCI express slots and socket 939   arguably one of the best boards you can buy, price aside

I think it's a good board, but you can get most of what it offers on much cheaper boards. Some people are saying that the x-fi cards don't quite fit in the lower slot between the video cards; you apparently need to bend some capacitors slightly so they don't brush against the bottom card. The board I got actually doesn't have a great slot layout either, but it was $170 and has unparalleled overclocking capabilities. The DFI Expert and the as yet unreleased MSI Diamond Plus have much better slot layouts and I was thinking of getting that Expert instead of the older SLI-DR, but I was turned off by its socket/memory layout and the reports of it killing CPUs due to overvoltage bugs.

I guess I have a little bit of bias against Asus though; my last three boards were all Asus and the two more recent ones both gave me a fair bit of trouble. This DFI one has been working perfectly so far in my stress testing, even on memory that is supposed to be incompatible with it.

I understand an X800GTO is probably the best "mainstream" card at the moment, or the new Geforce 6800GS.

Yeah, these are both nice cards. The GTOs are especially great deals, since there are certain varieties that are fully functional X850XTs in disguise.

5) Motherboards - While the new ATI chipsets for AMD look interesting they aren't mature yet.  The nForce 4 seems to be just as good as the nForce 2 was when I bought my current system 3 years ago.

I think the Crossfire boards are worth considering even at this point. nforce4 actually still has its fair share of issues and that A8R-MVP looks like a great board for its low price. I might have gotten that myself if I didn't need SLI support.

[Scuddie]

I don't know why people are even considering SLI.  It is quite overrated, and in most cases, impractical.  Going for a dual 7800GTX setup would be a waste of money and load.  If you want to get a good video card that will last for a while, I would recommend the X800 GTO.  I'm not talking about the R480 chipped ones, those are a hit or miss and you're paying extra for a gamble.

As for the SKT939 boards, since SLI is impractical, and SLI board is impractical.  I would go for an ASUS A8N5X.  Unless you're running 8 hard drives, quad inerleaving, or using the system as a 1Gbit router, it's really all you need, and it's at a very decent price. 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131569