Cheap Upgrade

Charlysays · 5 Jan 2007 at 00:21

I currently have an old Asus Nforce 2 Mobo with 1.5gig of PC3200 ram, an Athlon 3200XP and a nice tasty X1950pro 512mb AGP Graphics card. It runs well and does all I ask of it as a casual gamer but I was wondering is there any mobo's out there that I could upgrade to with a faster CPU that takes my AGP card and memory? Was going to do a complete rebuild in a few months but Due to overdoing it over the festive season my funds are no more so looking for a cheaper alternative if possible. Any suggestions folks?

Jumping · 5 Jan 2007 at 09:59

I bought the Asrock Dual sata 939 board which has both AGP and PCI-E port. It also has port allowing you to get an AM2 cpu plugged in it also shouldnt cost that much to get.

Its a great board for the price and it will allow you to upgrade in steps. I been very happy with it specially considering the price of the board.

Just noticed your cpu is a non 64bit, which means you will have to get a new CPU as well and I'm not sure how many socket 939 cpu you can still get and that means you will have to get a CPU that requires DDR2 memory, i'm not aware of any boards that will allow you to use DDR memory.

OCuk sell the Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA that will allow you to keep using your AGP card. It still requires you to get new RAM tho but at least it will save you the expense of upgrading your gfx card at the same time.

But it means on your next gfx update you will have to get a new board with PCI-e unless you can find a better AGP card in the future.

Man this turned into a long edit....

Charlysays · 5 Jan 2007 at 11:24

Thanks for the reply, there are still some AM2 CPU's Kicking about and I suppose I could ebay my older stuff to help cover costs.

Jumping · 5 Jan 2007 at 12:06

Yeah you will get amd AM2 easy enough as thats the current socket type. Its the socket 939 you can't really get anymore but there is no point in getting that since you need to get a new CPU, I first thought you had the 939 Athlon.

I had a quick look and it seems there is no AGP intel boards to get for the socket 775 so your cheapest path is sticking with AMD I think.

peetee · 5 Jan 2007 at 12:59

939 aint that rare, you could get a 3700 san diego for £70 i do beleive.
OcUK dont sell any 939 boards that are AGP anymore, but other e-tailers do, and so will your local shops. This is the cheapest upgrade option. I replaced a fried agp 939 board just over a month ago, i tracked down one of the same chipset though, and ended up gettin a proper poo one! haha. But its only a temp so its no fuss. Just hav a look around. OcUK still stock the processor i refered to above tho. If you look in b-grade or clearance you might source an agp 939 mobo

Jumping · 5 Jan 2007 at 13:08

Yeah but since he has to buy a new mobo and CPU its better getting an AM2 as it will make it slightly easier to step upgrade in the future. If you get a 939 you will most likely not be able to get anything better in *** future.

Whereas if you get an AM2 CPU now you can just get a new mobo with PCI-e thats AM2 saving you the cost of upgrading both. Although getting a 939 board would allow you to reuse your DDR ram.

So I guess it all comes down to how much you are willing to pay right now compared to your next upgrade.

peetee · 5 Jan 2007 at 14:06

yea but in the origional post he wants to re-use the ram&graphics. To be fair its not going to make much difference if he goes am2, both systems will need complete replacement at about same time.