keep my AGP card and upgrade?

[Fred]

Hi all,

Early Last year I bought an nice AGP graphics card for my old system, a BFG 6800 256MB GTS Ultra OC.

This is running on an Chaintech Zenith nforce2 Mobo with 333FSB and Athalon XP 2500, with 1GB of 3200 memory.

Is it possible to cheaply upgrade this system? There seem to be very limited options for AGP Mobo upgrades, and the only one I've found on the OC site is the Gigabyte K8NSC-939 nForce3 250GB (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-036-GI) for AMD...although maybe there are better options for Intel !?

Or would I be better to bite the bullet and switch from AGP?.

I use my computer mostly for Games.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[vanandjuanunited]

Asrock 939 dual sata 2 £50 AGP and Pci-e
Cpu A64 3200 £100

 

[PoliticallyCorrect]

yeh i agree if you wana stick with AGP azrock is the better option.

i wanted to stay with AGP because i was in a similar boat with a 6800GT. Eventually i sold this for more than it was worth and got a 7600GT which is a little better and this enabled me to switch from AGP/nForce 3 to PCI-E/nForce 4. nForce 4 offers many advantages of nForce 3.

you could consider this option too

 

[lee87]

Agree, the asrock board is great, you could keep you AGP card and upgrade to PCI-E later on as it has both slots.

I would try to spend more on the cpu and go dual core or get a 3700+.

 

[Fred]

Thanks a lot for the replies

Looks like I'll be ordering an asrock then!! just need to decide on the CPU...

Is the X2 3800 worth paying the extra 60 quid for over the 3700 ?

 

[PoliticallyCorrect]

depends what your using your CPU for and also depends if you wana overclock.

the 3700+ will b much faster in single threaded software (nearly all software) because of the slightly higher clock and extra cache. But the x2 is more versatile with doing multiple tasks.

 

[vanandjuanunited]

Both should overclock nicely. It depends whether or not you want to go dual core or not. More games are adding support for dual core cpu's.

 

[PoliticallyCorrect]

the 3700+ will clock higher than a 3800+
i've seen 3700+'s at 2.9GHz but i've seen 3800+ X2's struggling at 2.5, but it depends.

like he sed about choosing dual core tho, it's a good future proof root to take

 

[ACESHIGH]

More software & games are being patched or made with dual core support.

Quake 4 is approx 60% quicker on dual core than single core with new patch - at higher resolutions.

 

[kidloco]

was in the same situation myself recently, had a 6800GT that i didnt want to upgrade just yet.

bought the asrock and a 146 Opteron CPU, got it running at stock voltages just happily running at 2.75gig at the moment. got the cpu to 3gig with a bit of playing though.

really happy with it

 

[Stellios]

Asrock 939 dual sata 2 £50 AGP and Pci-e
Cpu A64 3200 £100

Exactly what im ordering next week, seems like a pretty popular setup. You get to keep your AGP card now but the option for PCI-E is there and its supposed to support the new M2 chips AMD are releasing in a few months.

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Wait a minute, A PGA 939 (939 pin) board is going to support a Socket M2 (940 pin) chip? How does one fit 240 pin DDR2 DIMMs in the 186 pin DDR DIMM slots? Perhaps I misunderstand you. I'm just wondering.

 

[vanandjuanunited]

Wait a minute, A PGA 939 (939 pin) board is going to support a Socket M2 (940 pin) chip? How does one fit 240 pin DDR2 DIMMs in the 186 pin DDR DIMM slots? Perhaps I misunderstand you. I'm just wondering.

An add on card supports the m2 processor and ddr2 ram