upgrading from socket A

Yrkoon · 19 Sep 2006 at 01:53

hey guys im currently using this rig at the moment :

gigabyte ga7va-xp kt400 mainboard
amd sempron 2800+ 2ghz 333fsb socket A
1 gig ram at ddr333 speeds (half is overclocked and half is under clocked )
power color X800GTO 256 mb (just bought that last week to replace a 5900xt)
creative audigy 1 sound card
3 hard drives 160, 13 and 40 gigs
dvd reader and a dvd writer
thermal take xaser v case blue

im seriously considering upgrading to the Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 (Socket 939 & Upgradable to AM2) AGP & PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-002-AK) and a a64 3000 also some of the ocuk value ram 512mb of it as i have a 512 stick of kingston ddr400 value ram in my rig at the moment.

im on a very tight budget about 130 pounds at the most so do you guys reckon its worth getting that and would my new agp card work at 8x on that asrock board?

also do you's think id see a decent difference in performance?

thx in advance

hp7909 · 19 Sep 2006 at 06:17

Yrkoon said:
{snip}1 gig ram at ddr333 speeds (half is overclocked and half is under clocked ){snip}

How is that possible?

Anyway, you are definitely on the right track choosing the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2. Your current RAM should work, then save up (or sell unused components) & get some decent 1GB (2x512MB) or 2GB (2x1GB) kit. It has to be a 'kit' because some mobos are very fussy if you mix...

Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 (Socket 939 & Upgradable to AM2) AGP & PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-002-AK) £37.99
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3000BPBOX) (CP-117-AM)£49.99
Subtotal £87.98
VAT £15.40
Total £103.38

monkeysmith · 19 Sep 2006 at 09:47

I have a simular setup, what sort of speed increase would you expect with this kinda upgrade? slightly better FPS in games?

deadeyedic30 · 19 Sep 2006 at 10:03

You will notice a difference.
If you setup your new system so the games run at the same settings as your old one, they will fly. The horse power jumping from an Athlon Xp to 64 is noticable.
Well it was for me, i went from an unlocked Barton running at 2Ghz on my NF7-S to an Athlon 65 3500+ Winchester on the Abit AV8, a mere 200mhz extra doesn't sound like much, but it is the way everything runs with the more up to date architecture. I went for the AV8 as i had only recently got a 6800GT agp and was not forking out for a similair card on pci-e.

dale1uk · 19 Sep 2006 at 10:09

Well a 3700sd is only an extra £5 over the 3000 and will be loads better and offer a good overclock but requires a heatsink. The Asrock board is a good upgrade path and your graphics card will work fine. For Memory a 1 or 2gb kit would have been better but puts you over budget so a single 512 stick to match up with the one you have would be ok.

CP-150-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-150-AM)
£53.99 £53.99
MB-002-AK Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 (Socket 939 & Upgradable to AM2) AGP & PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-002-AK)
£37.99 £37.99
MY-002-OK OcUK Value 512MB PC3200 184pin DDR Memory (MY-002-OK)
£29.99 £29.99
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£13.99 £13.99
Subtotal £135.96
VAT £23.80
Total £159.76

£30 over budget but the cpu makes up for that easily. Just sell off your old cpu, motherboard, and graphics card and its a very cheap upgrade.

Minstadave · 19 Sep 2006 at 10:45

Yeah the 3700SD is well worth stretching to.

Yrkoon · 19 Sep 2006 at 15:33

kool cheers guys that 3700 is really tempting me

hehe hp7909 ive got 2 twinmoss sticks of ddr266 256mb each when i went to the sempron from a palmino core xp i noticed that the memory would overclock to 333fsb to match the cpu then i chucked in a 512 stick of ddr400 at a later date and they seem to work well together at ddr 333 speeds

edit : well thats the stuff for my comp ordered the 3700

my dad also ordered similar stuff in a seperate order cept he went for a gig of ram and a pcie graphics card

Yrkoon · 29 Sep 2006 at 00:25

all built and working for about a week now had to reformat my main windows drive tho

thank you to every one who recomended the system parts especially the oem 3700 sandy im very happy with my rig now dads comp is same rig cept a pcie 7900gs the cheapest one nearly double my 3d marks hehe

x3 plays on full settings at 1024 res 4xaa and af while before i got slowdown in same sectors on lowests settings with 5900xt x800reduced it but combined with a64 the difference is amazing card was definatly bottleknecked

to any one still on socket a x3 got a jump with the graphics card on old rig but the athlon 64 an ddr 400 dual channel is just amazing compared to my 2 ghz sempron 2800+

yep the kingston value ram i had at 333 got auto detected as 333 but manually changed it to 400 and its working in dual channel with the ocuk value 512 stick cheapest and most bang per buck upgrade i have ever done thank you's guys

hehe me an dad both ran out an bought 500watt fsp bluestorm psu's wouldnt trust the cheapo psu units we had. at end of build on mine we ran out an bought em then installed psu in mine right finished then he brought his comp through for rebuilding

will deffo be buying from ocuk for my next upgrade i think 2 gig ram.

as luck would have it my m8's mum pc has a chipped barton core cpu that was running at 333fsb 2400+ i think his mums gonna buy my sempron for 20 pounds good deal.