Canibalising my PC!!

Octavarium

Octavarium

Octavarium

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30 Nov 2005
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Rather than buy a new PC I have decided to go cheap and just replace the inards of my current one but seeing as i'm not the most clued up person when it comes to hardware can someone give me a hand...

I have 1gig of DDR - KEEPING
ASUS P4S800D - GOING
Skt 478 P4 2.8 GHz - GOING
120 gig HDD - KEEPING
Radeon 9600pro - KEEPING (For Now)
Case, PSU, FDD, DVD etc - KEEPING

Just bought a ASRock Dual Series939 motherboard, my plan is to get a processor (probably 3700 or 3800) and install the pair whilst reinstalling XP.

Then once I have some more money I can finally replace the 9600 with a decent PCI-E card (perhaps a X800XT)

Can anyone see any problems (no matter how obvious!!!) because I don't wanna bugger anything up!!

Thanks guys!
 
The mobo is fine, the CPU should be the 3700 rather than the 3800 (more cache, you can overclock to get more Mhz but cache cannot be increased).

In the graphics department give us a price and we'l tell you what cards would be best at that price.
 
Im thinking of around £150 for the graphics

But bearing in mind that this might be in 2 months time so current cards might be cheaper...

I looked at the specs for the AMD CPU's and I can never understand why they seem to vary the Cache so much on the high end processors?!
 
£150 puts us right in the field of an x850xt for £152. Excellent card and the only choice in this price band currently. Unless 7800gt's come down in price I doubt it will be beaten.
 
You mention about buying a AGP card now and upgrading to a PCI-E later. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as that as most of us have already found out. Switching to PCI-E will require you to upgrade your Motherboard, CPU and possibly you’re PSU. For this reason, your upgrade isn’t going to be cheap and the jump to PCI_E has been a painful one.

Looking at your predicament, I’d just make the jump if you are really set on an upgrade. And go for a PCI_E board with either Sli or Crossfire, even if you don’t intend to use dual cards yet but it increases your upgrade path for a later date.

I don’t think you can go wrong with the AMD 64 4400+, Asus A8N Sli and a Seasonic 600w PSU. Your graphics card is down to personal preference and choice, depending on the sort of money you want to spend.
 
CPU (for a gaming rig): AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939)
CPU (if you multitask / want to futureproof your rig): AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939)

GPU: PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-037-PC)

or if you want performance to better match your CPU: HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)

dont see any problems with the above.
 
The problem with an x1800xl is its no-where near his budget. Although the point of a 3800X2 is good, I'd be going for a 3800X2 myself.
 
Cheers for the advice guys, quick and to the point as usual! :-)

I'm keen to stick with Ati if pos as I know them from my 9600 so unless 7800's drop through the floor it will be a 3700 SanDiego and a x850xt for me!
 
Mr Huddy said:
You mention about buying a AGP card now and upgrading to a PCI-E later. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as that as most of us have already found out. Switching to PCI-E will require you to upgrade your Motherboard, CPU and possibly you’re PSU. For this reason, your upgrade isn’t going to be cheap and the jump to PCI_E has been a painful one.

Looking at your predicament, I’d just make the jump if you are really set on an upgrade. And go for a PCI_E board with either Sli or Crossfire, even if you don’t intend to use dual cards yet but it increases your upgrade path for a later date.

I don’t think you can go wrong with the AMD 64 4400+, Asus A8N Sli and a Seasonic 600w PSU. Your graphics card is down to personal preference and choice, depending on the sort of money you want to spend.
Click to expand...

The Asrock motherboard has an AGP slot & also a PCI-E slot so it wont be that much hassle to upgrade. As for the cpu id go with a 3700+ as already mentioned.
 
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