video card/cpu/motherboard upgrade

[fish99]

Hi,

I'd like some advice on the best upgrade path available to me.

Firstly here's my current system-

Asus P4C800
Intel P4 3.2 HT Prescott (freezer 4 cooler)
Powercolour X800 Pro 256 Mb (softmodded to XT, running at 500/500) AGP (/w VGA Silencer)
Twinmos DDR400 1.5 GB (dual channel, 2 * 256, 2 * 512)
Maxtor SATA 150 HDD 120 GB
SB Audigy 2 ZS
Thermaltake Tsunami case
Dual 12 cm LED fans / Nexus fan controller
LG DVD writer
Enemax Noisetaker 475W dual rail PSU

Some good stuff there (apart from the rattley TT case ), or at least it was good when I bought it all. Runs nice and quiet too.

The first obvious things is - clearly most of the current system has to go. The video card is AGP, so is the motherboard, so any worthwhile upgrade (IMO) means a switch to PCI-Express, so that means at least a new motherboard, new CPU and new video card.

From a price point of view I'm looking at A64s, Socket 939. A64 4000+ at £117 looks about right. Possibly I'll get the OEM version @£105 and an AC Freezer 64 since I've owned a few AC coolers (see above) and been impressed by them. For the video card there's the Connect3D X1800 XT 256 mb at £170 or a HIS 512mb version at £205. My current card is 500/1000 with 16 pipes (ps2.0), so I'm only going to consider something significantly better. 625/1500 with 16 pipes and ps3.0 would be enough to be worth it IMO. I suppose 7900 GTs are another option - there's the BFG version which is 475/1360 with 24 pipes and ps3.0 at £192. I will of course be checking out benchmarks before deciding on a video card.

Motherboard wise I'd like to stick with Asus, but I'm not too fussy here. Asus A8N-VM CSM Micro ATX PCI Express Motherboard at £55 seems to do everything I need since I'm not bothered about crossfire/SLI. I won't be using the onboard video/audio btw. Memory - I'm not budgeting for this at the moment since I want to see if my current ram works with the new motherboard first.

I'm looking to spend about £400.

So, questions-

-is it wise to go Socket939 still? Is it in danger of becoming a dead-end any time soon ?
-does this look like a good value for money upgrade ?
-are these good choices ?
-anything wrong with that relatively cheap motherboard, remembering that I'm not interested in crossfire/SLI ?
-any reason why I shouldn't get a motherboard with onboard video, given that I'm not going to use the onboard video ?
-am i missing anything obvious here ?

Thanks a million,
Simon.

 

[daviebhoy]

Personally I'd ditch your ram.
your system would run better with just two sticks of higher capacity ram and would run in 1T mode.

If your building a new system why not wait a few weeks and go for a
core 2 duo chip.
not that much more cash and would give you a much better upgrade path in the future

Obvouisly if you go this route you would need DDR2 ram.

 

[fish99]

The system does say it's running in 'pure dual channel mode'. It says in the manual that while in each channel you need a pair of identical DIMMs, you don't need all 4 DIMMs to be identical. I haven't heard the term '1T' before, but there's a DRAM Idle Timer setting in the BIOS which I can set to 0T, 8T, 16T etc (but not 1T).

Anyway, I know you're right about DDR2/AM2 but the price of ram pushes me beyond what I want to spend. I'm only after a 'decent' speed increase, the main point of the upgrade is so my brother can have my old cpu/video card, and my parents PC can have his old stuff. Really don't have more than about £380 to spend.

 

[fish99]

shameless bump