Past its update age?

[Victor1st]

Hey all, new poster

Ive been noticing after playing Dragon Age 2 and Homeland that my old rig is showing signs of age...cause as youll see, its is getting on the old side. Here's the specs...

Board: DFI Lanparty UltraD NF4 (skt 939)
CPU: AMD Athlon64 x2 4200+
Mem: DDR PC3200 Kingston 2GB (2x1GB sticks)
PSU: OCZ StealthXStream 2 700W Power Supply (ordered yesterday as current ThermalTake is showing signs of age)
Drives: Both IDE drives, both 300GB Maxtor, 1 Sony DVDRW, 1 Sony CDRW
GPU: GeForce 8800GTX
Sound: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
Monitor: Generic nameless LCD widescreen, native resolution 1440 x 900
OS: Windozeeee XP Pro 32bit

I'd love to go mad ordering bits for an entire rebuild on overclockers but I'm on UK ESA on the disability allowance side of it and after my last medical exam the examiner said "you'll be on it for another two years at least" >.<

So, i can't work, not for want of actually WANTING to work, but as the examiner said no employer would take me.

So, this is the thing, is it possible to simply upgrade the graphics card to one of the newer ones, slap in more memory and stick windows 7 in it?

Or is the next door neighbour right...the motherboard is simply too old to support windows 7?

EDIT: Ohhhh...and im not looking for a whizzy fast machine, just something to tide me over for the next couple of years and be able to at least play upcoming games this year...hopefully someone in here can tell me if the old NV4 mobo's have drivers for Windows 7...cause i vited DFI and couldnt find any

 

[ThomasTheTankEngine]

Nvidia made a windows vista driver for the Nforce4. You'll be able to find it on their website in the legacy section.

Not sure if this will work with win7 though. I expect it will, but there might be bugs or features that don't work.

 

[cmndr_andi]

That system will work fine with windows 7 - I gave my old s939 system to my family a year or so ago and put windows 7 x64 on it and it worked fine. I just downloaded/installed the drivers that were offered by windows update.

As for playing games. I would suggest upgrading the CPU, Motherboard and RAM before you touch the graphics card. Th 8800GTX can still handle most modern games reasonably well - but a Athlon 64 X2 @2.2GHz is really going to be holding things back.

If you have a retail version of Windows XP - then I would just stick with that (it is still fine with games - very few require better than XP) to save some money, keep the 8800GTX for now and get this CPU, this mobo and this RAM. Do you think your budget can support this upgrade?

If you want a GPU upgrade on top of this - then this GPU is amazing value and a decent step faster than the 8800GTX.

 

[Victor1st]

Nvidia made a windows vista driver for the Nforce4. You'll be able to find it on their website in the legacy section.

Not sure if this will work with win7 though. I expect it will, but there might be bugs or features that don't work.

That system will work fine with windows 7 - I gave my old s939 system to my family a year or so ago and put windows 7 x64 on it and it worked fine. I just downloaded/installed the drivers that were offered by windows update.

Yeah ive been digging further into folks using Win 7 with the older NV4 based chipsets, folks have said they didnt have a lot of problems apart from some serious issues with raid...which i dont use anyway

Then again theres been some reports of folks on this particular DFI board i have saying they got some weird issues with a few other things as well. Generally though it looks like it can handle Win7

As for playing games. I would suggest upgrading the CPU, Motherboard and RAM before you touch the graphics card. Th 8800GTX can still handle most modern games reasonably well - but a Athlon 64 X2 @2.2GHz is really going to be holding things back.

If you have a retail version of Windows XP - then I would just stick with that (it is still fine with games - very few require better than XP) to save some money, keep the 8800GTX for now and get this CPU, this mobo and this RAM. Do you think your budget can support this upgrade?

It'll take a bit of saving up, but at least i can keep the old 8800GTX and get a new mobo, CPU and mem, at least then i'll be set to upgrade the card at a later date. The prices of the mobo and mem aint too bad either, but the CPU is ouchie...maybe by the time i save up the cash the price would have went down a little

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[Trusty]

2nd Hand? A Q6600, 775 (P45/G41/31), 4 x 1GB memory combo won't cost a great deal. £120/£130 maybe? Would be a massive leap especially if you overclocked the Q6600 which all can do very easily with a bump of the FSB.

 

[cmndr_andi]

but the CPU is ouchie...maybe by the time i save up the cash the price would have went down a little

I wouldn't expect the price to go down too much further - this generation of AM3 processors will be succeeded by bulldozer in a few months and when that happens they will not be produced any more.

However, if you want an even better value CPU for gaming then have a look at this one. Its a 3.2GHz triple core - at the moment three cores is pretty much the performance/price sweet-spot for gaming, due to the way games are made.

Also, please be aware that the s939 stuff sells for pretty nice prices on a popular auction site. I bet you could make some good money back on your CPU and motherboard by selling them. This would help pay for the upgrades.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

On the famous auction site your socket 939 X2 4200+ has gone for around £50 recently.

TBH,either a £90 to £100 Phenom II X4 955BE or a Core i3 2100 would be a big upgrade and even with a motherboard and 4GB of DDR3 should not cost you more than around £200 in total.

Even a £60 Athlon II X3 450 would be a decent upgrade.

 

[setter]

Also, please be aware that the s939 stuff sells for pretty nice prices on a popular auction site. I bet you could make some good money back on your CPU and motherboard by selling them. This would help pay for the upgrades.

This is true, i have an old s939 rig that im gonna upgrade, asus a8n 32 sli deluxe, a64 4000 and 2gb of corsair pc 3500, Gonna stick it on auction and build an upto date amd based rig, got an 8800gt to use in it, or one of the 470's in my rig in sig.

 

[Victor1st]

However, if you want an even better value CPU for gaming then have a look at this one. Its a 3.2GHz triple core - at the moment three cores is pretty much the performance/price sweet-spot for gaming, due to the way games are made.

Also, please be aware that the s939 stuff sells for pretty nice prices on a popular auction site. I bet you could make some good money back on your CPU and motherboard by selling them. This would help pay for the upgrades.

Ahhhhhh three cores looks like the way to go. This machine is gonna last me for two years anyway. If the docs are right i should be able to go back to light work in a couple of years and not have to scrape by with the disability allowance every two weeks, then its super upgrade time!

I would have sold the old DFI LanParty board, heck, i got it from the well known auction site along with the CPU when my previous EliteGroup 939 fried cause of a faulty powersupply (i'll never trust Hiper again) but my dad is getting into the "whole com-putter thing" as he says and he's struggling with an old Intel PII from years ago with an old Riva TNT card, it struggles even when he's playing those naff games on "The Facebooks".

Im gonna give him the board, processor and ram and stick in the old 7950GT i still have boxed up, that'll keep him going for a while