£200 to spend, best option being?

[CaNNoN_1981]

I have about £200 to spend on an upgrade, firstly i saw the GeCube ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP) - £188 and thought that would do, but reading another thread else were in the forum i'm thinking that switching to the route of pci-e for round about the same price would be the better option.

Focusing on the HIS ATI Radeon X1950 Pro ICEQ 3 TURBO SILENT Heatpipe 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) and DFI LanParty UT RDX200CF-DR Crossfire (Socket 939) Motherboard - £194 for both.

Few questions i have are: my psu, still powerful enough or would that need an upgrade. Ram, would it be fine in the new pci-e setup?

Dont mind staying sck939 for time being, getting 2.45ghz atm, might switch to dual core sometime in the future, but isnt 1st priority.

Also if anyone has any opintions on my choices please feel free to add comments.

 

[LanceCrossfire]

take the pci-express lane

 

[melbourne720]

agreed, PCI-E route that way the most expensive part (the gfx card) will be compatible when you upgrade the rest (Mobo, CPU, RAM) in the future.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

PSU should be fine, as will your Ram.

 

[CaNNoN_1981]

Are the pci-e parts good choices?

 

[melbourne720]

Are the pci-e parts good choices?

X1950 Pro is a good card, by all accounts. And by going PCI-E, you are future-proofing.

If you wanted NVidia alternatives...

circa £110: OCuk 7900 GS
circa £180: eVGA 7900 GT
circa £230: MSI 7900 GTO (that's gone up in price a lot, it used to be 180 inc vat!)

 

[CaNNoN_1981]

Pretty much made my mind up now, just one last question, my antec 480w trueblue is the 1st rev of that model, so not sure if it will be compatable with the dfi pci-e board, will the board come with the relavent adp's or is that a sep purchase?

Same goes for the pci-e gfx power adp's?

 

[CaNNoN_1981]

Yep the dfi board is 24 pin so think i would need the convertor from 20 to 24 pins, although i cant see a convertor to change the 4 pin power cable to 8 pin, am i missing something?

Edit: apparantly i can use a 4 pin connector in an 8 pin slot so no probs there.