Thinking of upgrade, idea's needed

nex20

nex20

nex20

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Joined
6 Jan 2009
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England
Hi guys,

My PC build is currently:

M3N-HT Deluxe (mempipe) motherboard
AMD athlon Dual Core 3.0ghz
2x 8800GS SLi
Corsair TX 750W ATX SLI Compliant Power Supply

Firstly, I wanted to just upgrade my processor and was eye'ing up the following: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=6&subid=1328 or http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-253-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1328.

Then noticing they run on AM3 and my motherboard is only AM2 (I believe) I would have to upgrade that aswell. Whilst looking at the motherboards I noticed there are 980a and 780a versions and my graphics cards are 780a. In the long run would it make more sense to get 980a cards or are 780a cards able to run on 980a mobo's?

Confused guy here! Help appreciated!
 
Firstly. Go to the CPU support list of your motherboard manufacture website to see what it can support, you may only need a bios update.

Your last paragraph has confused me so can you explain again the question.
 
Indeed, PCI-E graphics cards should run in pretty much any PCI-E motherboards...

edit: your motherboard supports all the Phenom IIs, just make sure you've got the latest BIOS version.
 
Last edited:
stulid said:
Firstly. Go to the CPU support list of your motherboard manufacture website to see what it can support, you may only need a bios update.

Your last paragraph has confused me so can you explain again the question.
Click to expand...

The problem was that my graphics card run version 780a I believe and nvidia released new cards and mobo's that run 980a. But reading a article I found this:

The basic difference between this chipset and its predecessor is the support of socket AM3 processors. Since the support of DDR3 memory is realized by the built-in processor controller , nothing depends from the chipset in this sense. Consequently, change of chipset names from nForce 780a SLI to nForce 980a SLI pursues the exceptionally marketing purposes - to create the effect of new product.

So basically there is no difference between the two?

Also looking at this: http://event.asus.com/mb/am3_cpu_support/ my motherboard does actually support AM3 if I do a bios flash to version 1602? Where do I find this version? :/
 
Ok, That looks basically sorted then. I got the .BIN file for my mobo. Now just to work out how to flash my bios without destroying my PC :p
 
Either stick it on a floppy (if your computer has a drive) or use/make a FAT32 partition on your HDD is probably easiest. The flashing options for your motherboard are probably accessible from the BIOS.
 
Thanks for the help redmint. The new bios version has been sucessfully installed without no visible hickups 'touch wood'. It was actually much easier than I expected it to be :)
 
Yeah, if it goes wrong it can cause some damage. Just ordered my new CPU too... bring on friday morning when the installation fun begins!
 
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