Switch from AGP to PCI-Exp: Getting the same whack I already have.

peteruk

peteruk

peteruk

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27 Jan 2005
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Nr. Norwich, Norfolk
Hey all,

I know, I know, I am living in the stoneage, but my Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard has finally ground to almost a complete halt, after months of horrendously unreliable booting and I am clueless as to what is wearing it down to its near lifeless shell. :(

So, I figured it is high-time to switch to the new way of thinking, namely PCI-Express. However, I am currently doing a spot of volunteering and travelling, and will be off to university after that, so am not too keen to fork out a large sum of cash for this. So, I could use the advice of some pro's who've kept up with the market and know what is roughly equivalent to what I already have on the new system. :o

My current rig looks something like the below:

Asus A8V Deluxe Mobo
Opteron 144 socket 939 (run at 2.2Ghz)
2 x 1Gb of 2-3-2-5 PC3200 Ram.
Radeon X800 XT PE 256mb graphics card.
EDIT: Forgot to mention I currently have a 420W generic PSU, which may unfortunately need to be shifted come the upgrade.

So, please spec me a new setup that will give me roughly the same, if not slightly more power (but hopefully not any less) as what I have. If you could also suggest what sell in value my current gear has (my card might be able to cough up a few £'s) it would be grand.

Thanks to anyone who can help out, :)
Peter
 
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icey_haj said:
Budget?
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I'm really quite open, I'd just like to spend as much as it takes to get a system up to the same power, but not much more. Of course I'm concious of value, I'll happily pay for example £150 to get twice as much power as £100 or such (these figures are just plucked from the air, but you get my notion).

If you can, feel free to spec a number of options from equivalent power and one and two steps up pour favor.

:)
 
S.A.S said:
do you want a whole setup or just the case, or just a motherboard?
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As little upgraded as possible. I figure that will be the motherboard, ram (as a new mobo will only take faster ram), CPU (as I guess I'll have to change socket?) and graphics card (due to pci-exp switch, AGP 939 mobos seem near impossible to come by). Possibly the PSU too, but I'm not sure. I don't see why the HDDs, optical drives, screen, case, sound card etc. would need to go. :)
 
icey_haj said:
captureqg2.jpg


That will absolutely thrash your current setup. It will overclock nicely too.
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Looks great, thank you! :D

Is the PSU entirely neccesary?

Also, any areas I could cut back on (the mobo looks a tad pricey)?

Thanks again. :)
 
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S.A.S said:
Seasonic Silverpower 400W PSU £39.99
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But that PSU is less powerful than what I already have, surely I can do without that?

Also, can anyone give an idea of how much more powerful these new setups are in comparison? I'm really not looking to upgrade here, more to just switch over.

Thanks for the specs people, very much appreciated. :)
 
steve258 said:
Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Rev2
+
Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200

and you're sorted, it will take your agp card AND DDR ram. Although if budget allows I'd still recommend a new GFX and DDR2 ram, even a mid range GFX nowadays will perform a lot better than the quite frankly ancient X800XT.
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That looks good for a minimum change, thanks! That comes to just over £100, yep?

The cheapest way I can see to the second upgrade would be something along the lines of:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (11138-00-20R) Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (11138-00-20R) £56.99
(£65.54) £56.99
(£65.54)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail £53.99
(£62.09) £53.99
(£62.09)
Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Rev2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Rev2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard £47.99
(£55.19) £47.99
(£55.19)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £28.99
(£33.34) £28.99
(£33.34)
Sub Total : £187.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL @ Home Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.49
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £29.47
Total : £225.92

But that comes to over £200, which is (as you can imagine) twice as much. It's a shame there's no half way point.
 
S.A.S said:
yes but yours is generic, as people have said
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Ahh thank you, duely noted.

I am tempted to take my chances with it, and upgrade it if I am not happy with its performance. It may take my time in the long run, but that £40 is worth saving I think.
 
reflux said:
I think you're a bit off the mark there mate. Generic PSUs are unreliable and bordering on dangerous. It's far better to spend the £40 now, and not regret it later.
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Well my experience with them is limited, so I'll happily take your more experienced word for it :).

For the record, I've just had a quick glance and it's an 'Enlight' PSU, so while it does have a make on the side, I kinda classed that as generic as I'd never heard of them before. Just checking we're on the same definition of 'generic'.
 
steve258 said:
a quick google on that asrock board has revealed numerous incompatibility of its PCI-E port, especially with the latest gen of GFX so if you do decide to go PCI-E in the future there is a chance that it might not work with the mobo.

*EDIT* also its PCI-E only works at x4 instead of the full x16 speed so you won't make the most out of a modern GFX card.
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Worth baring in mind, thanks. Are there any other boards that offer both AGP and PCI-Exp that might be more compatible?
 
ChrisLX200 said:
My last setup was an A8V + Opty170, which also ground to a halt (WinXP). It was far too much hassle to re-install the OS and all apps so I upgraded (to an i7 rig). Thing is, I set the AV8 and Opty up in another case, did a fresh install of Vista, clocked the CPU a bit, and it's like a new computer. Much faster (apparently) than it was under XP. Which just goes to prove an OS install will go bad eventually. My point is, if the original performance was good enough for you and you don't want to spend money try a fresh install - you'll notice the difference.
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Thing is I'm having trouble getting an output on the monitor (perhaps 1 in every 20 boots will yield this), windows loading screen is reached on about 1 in every 50 boots, and it hasn't got further than this for several hundred boots. The numbers are increasing all the time.

Is it possible to remove the operating system from dos and reinstall, without having to do a complete format? There's some data on there I'd hate to lose.

Also, are you suggesting buying Vista to do this with?

Thanks for the suggestion,
peter :)
 
peteruk said:
I have to say this sounds like an exceedingly good suggestion! :D

What CPU would you suggest for this approach? The cheapest Phenom I could get my hands on? :) I'm guessing that would be the best value approach, if the X2s are largely the same chip underneath...
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By my calculations that's the 8450 2.1ghz model? :cool:

EDIT: Apparently from AMD they do an 8250, but can't seem to find it for sale at many places. Also appears to have a different thermal power design. Hmm.
 
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Spooter said:
If money is a concern do this first im pretty sure it will fill your needs for awhile longer if gaming isnt top of the requirements..

  • Update Bios
    [*]Format Disk
  • Fresh Install of Operating System
  • Install all latest drivers
  • Get a decent Antivirus program which doesnt hog the system... (avg is good)

And you system will be quick again!!

Maybe do a slight overclock if you havent already.
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Is there any way to do this without having to format the disk from DOS? ie. Can I install a fresh operating system to a new blank drive and then remove the old one via windows after I have salvaged everything I want from it?

Also, I've had it on a 450mhz overclock for most of its lifetime, but reducing this has made no difference to stability.

EDIT: Getting a display on boot is nearing impossible now...:eek:
 
Uriel said:
Either that I'd be tempted to get a cheaper X2 now and upgrade to a Phenom 2 when the prices have dropped and more games use multi-core effectively. Clock speed still counts for a lot in many games and you may find that a low-clocked Phenom does worse than your current CPU in several games. The Athlon X2 7750+ Black Edition is actually a multiplier unlocked dual core Phenom and can clock quite high: http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-athlon-x2-7750-be-review/12

Don't forget, AM3 CPUs up to 140w (when they appear) should work in the board, as long as ASROCK keep updating the BIOS. They're generally very good at supporting their hardware for at least a few years.
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Ahh that is interesting. So an X2 7750+ Black Edition is potentially faster for less money? I'm sold :D
 
Uriel said:
Even though I see the appeal of keeping working parts, you're getting on for a major rebuild. Last time I checked, AGP graphics cards had quite a price hike over their PCI-E equivalents. I would check the 2nd hand value of your existing card, as there are probably better options if you don't need AGP (that board has no PCI-E x1 slots, and you couldn't use SLI or Crossfire for example).

You can plug your existing hard drive into any PC with the appropriate SATA or IDE port. They will usually be able to read it (just make sure it's not the boot drive), although a few programs like Norton Goback could make it effectively unreadable.
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Thanks for the guidance, I will attempt to salvage what I can from my PC and see if fresh software will solve the issue. However, I can't help but think (from sources I've read on the internet) that this won't neccesarily solve the problem, and even if it does it'll only be a temporary messure. :(

If I throw out there a few details about my circumstances it might shed some light on where I'm coming from. At the moment I'm on a gap year doing a mix of work and volunteering both at home and overseas. In October, I'll be off to University. I'm also not a huge gamer any more, in fact, it's been a few months since I've let a game slip into my DVD drive. :o

So basically, I'm really looking at remaking what I have into a swift but most importantly reliable PC for as little as possible to tie me over till October, when I can then indulge in a moderately expensive laptop (perhaps even a full HD compatible one :cool:) and share my pc use between that and my home pc, depending on where I am. :)

Based on that, I think the idea of the AS Rock and a new CPU and ram will be the best bet, and with a bit of luck I won't have to upgrade it again for 4/5 years (long course). :eek:

I think the only question left is the CPU - am I going to be able to get more power from clocking the black eddition X2 or the lowest clock Phenom X3? :confused:

A big thank you for your help though, I'd have never found these options otherwise. :)
 
Also, the X800 XT PE rate appears to be around £35, nothing shocking. I have an arctic cooler on it too, which might get me an extra £5/£10, but I can't see that buying me a better card, could it? :eek:
 
TheMorningStar said:
Suggestion.
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That looks good as a slightly higher spend, but considering the amount of gaming I do now I think I'll save the money that I would have spent upgrading graphics and go for the ASRock option and keep my (albeit old) X800 XT PE. Thanks all the same. :) I'd also probably avoid going for another ASUS board. We've had 3 A8Vs in my family and they've all gone bust eventually. :eek::(

All I could really use now was some clarification/confirmation about what CPU to go for - I get the impression an X2 Black Edition will produce more processing power than the lowest clocked X3 Phenom (even though the latter has an extra core?). If someone could give the nod of approval to this notion before I fork out my hard earned cash it would be appreciated! :)
 
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