Spec an upgrade - help as I'm out of touch

PerfectSwing

PerfectSwing

PerfectSwing

Associate
Joined
16 Feb 2004
Posts
41
Ok, it's been a while ( I used to spend a lot of time on here but I became disillusioned with upgrading every 3 months :D ) and I've got the itch to rip my rig apart and give it some new legs.

Current spec - 2 year old socket 478 P4 2.6 HT / Epox 4pda2+ i865 / 2 sticks 512mb Crucial pc3200 cas3 dual channel / Radeon 9800pro.

What I'm looking for - board / cpu and graphics card. I'm thinking my memmory and other bits like drives and psu will work in the meantime.

Budget - £350-£400, £450 Max if going dual core.

Ideally I would like a dual core processor but after reading about the good clocks coming from the x64 3700+ I'm thinking that might be the best bet. Board wise I would like the option of SLI as I'm going to have to go for a cheapish VGA card. Being able to add another at a later date owuld be a plus.

So the main questions are....

DFI or ASUS SLI ?

X2 3800+ / Opteron 165 or X64 3700+

Nvidia - what variant...... my monitor has a max rez of 1280 though I use 1024*768. I occasionally play 3d shooters though I have an Xbox360 for shenanigans like that now.

Thanks for looking, any suggestions greatly appreciated
mj
 
Either

GX-032-OK OcUK GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-032-OK)
£179.95 £179.95
MB-101-AS Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
CP-118-AM AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3200BPBOX) (CP-118-AM)
£99.95 £99.95
Total: £411

or

CP-134-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
£184.95 £184.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
GX-037-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-037-PC)
£129.95 £129.95
Total: £452


Personally I prefer the 2nd rig over the first purely for the processing power. I doubt you'd need the 7800gt for 1024 performance.
 
Either of the above looks fine to me, I'd probably say go with the second one as well since it doesn't sound like you are much of a gamer and the X850XT will cope well with most games still especially as you aren't talking high resolutions :)
 
REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) 1
£134.95 £134.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS) 1
£69.95 £69.95
GX-055-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO16 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-055-PC) 1
£104.95 £104.95
Subtotal £309.85
VAT £54.23
Total £364.08

You'll also need an ATX2. PSU as this is a PCI-Express system.
 
CP-134-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
£184.95 £184.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
GX-037-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-037-PC)
£129.95 £129.95
Total: £452

My preferred option of the two too.

You will probably need a PSU as Fender said - the Tagan 430W Silent Modular is a good choice.
 
BigDom said:
CP-134-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
£184.95 £184.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
GX-037-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-037-PC)
£129.95 £129.95
Total: £452

My preferred option of the two too.

You will probably need a PSU as Fender said - the Tagan 430W Silent Modular is a good choice.
Click to expand...


As above, this is the option to go for imo.
 
could he not use an adapter from 20-24 pin and sata/pci-x to tide him over with his existing psu?
actually this is what i am thinking of doing when i upgrade.got an antec 550w truecontrol.any thoughts on this please? :)
 
The 4 extra pins are two grounds and an extra 5 and 12 volt rails just to split the current when the system is pulling a lot. Unless you have some mad specs like an OCed FX60 and crossfired x1900xtx then you wont really need the specialist power supplies that have the split rails. So a converter should work fine.

It all depends what PSU you have now I suppose. I would reckon 380W+ on a good brand to hold this system.
 
Thanks for the advice guys (and gals ?? :D )

Some stuff there that I would have not thought of - both as a purchase decision and my recently acquired technical ignorance.

Re' the PSU, I have an Antec true blue 450 or 480 (can't recall). I actually have a 20-24 pin convertor that I got for a Compaq board (which incidentally melted some chips on the board due to Compaq using a different pin out :eek: ). I suppose I could use that to be going on with, but maybe a new one would be best as I have noticed some strangeness of late - PC rebooting when I mount a CD/DVD image or sometimes when I juts out a disk in. The board reports a pretty low 12v ~ 11.4v is the lowest, but the EPox board is pretty flaky for HW monitoring - the chip temp jumps from 30-70'c periodically, hence I don't even bother using temperature monitoring software.

Board wise I have to say I'm not 100% on an ATI chipset. The reviews are good though so I might give it a whirl.

I've got a week or two to sell some kit to see if I can increase my budget, so maybe I'll be able to stretch it a bit. Ohh no............. the madness has me again :D

Cheers again
mj
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom