Recommend me some upgrade bits

Post by **Eagle** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:27 am

I'm looking to upgrade my current machine.

Abit NF7S - V2
AMD Athlon XP 3000+
2 GB DDR Ram
Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb

Would like to stay with AMD chip

Was thinking of going back to an Nvidia Gfx maybe 256 or 512mb on a PCI-E

DDR2 ram?

Suggestions and prices plz

Maybe looking for a couple of HDD as well

Post by **Trig** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:12 pm

If you go for a S939 chip means you can pick up a board and chip and have PCI-E graphics but means you can keep your existing RAM, otherwise your looking at new board, new chip new ram and new gfx.
Look at things like the A64/3200 or X2 4400.
There is a board out there that does AGP and PCI-E slots I think, pm Madman and see what board it was he was looking at.

If your going new machine then the AMD AM2 chips arent really any faster its just the swap to DDR2 really over the S939 but will give you more of an upgrade path in the end.
Maybe Dak or Bob will have the best replies as there both in the same boat and have just upgraded to S939 3200's iirc...

Post by **Dangerous Bob** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:09 pm

yup, Dak and I have just about upgraded to the same spec.

Different Gfx, I've got hold of an XT800 and Daks using something slightly better, but both are PCIe 16.

The board we've gone for is an ABIT KN8 SLi. not really using the SLi, but the price is low enough not to worry about it.
It takes DDR ram, up to 8Gb. runs PC3200 as well as slightly older stuff.
Most other boards are using DDR2, fine if you've got the cash to do the RAM as well.

Both have gone for AMD64 3200 Venice core (not the AM2), Daks got his clocked up to 2.4 I thionk and it's as stable as a Horsey house.
I've gone for and OEM version with an aftermarket cooler, though i thinks Dak's was retail.
We were thinking of Opterons, but they're quite a bit more expensive.

Both have also gone for a SATA 160 Gb drive as well, Scan have some at a decent price.

Daks as impressed as anything with his new rig, I'm still waiting for my parts and some time to do a rebuild and install.

Mobo, CPU and HD came in at about Â£160.
Up to you how much you want to spend on Gfx.

If you want to have a quick squint at the thread where we discussed all this over at the Marlins....

<a href="http://www.ma-squadron.co.uk/forum/view ... sc&start=0" target="_blank">Linky</a>

Fair bit of rambling, but there's some good bits

Post by **Eagle** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:20 pm

I just recently built a machine for my sister using the Abit Fatal1ty AN8 SLI

Is the KN8 a more recent board?

Post by **Dangerous Bob** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:30 pm

tbh, I wouldn't know, cant see a lot of difference between them.

Check out the thread in the Marlins forum though.
Zak's the man with the plan.

Post by **Richie** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:07 pm

I have just replaced the MB of my main rig cause I thought it was faulty. Turns out it probably isnt (waiting on the replacement PSU to be sure) so I have a pretty decent MB sitting here doing nothing I can sell ya.

Its an Asus A8N-SLI Premium (Socket 939).

Nice board - <a href="http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3& ... odelmenu=1" target="_blank">http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3& ... lmenu=1</a>

I decided to keep the new MB (Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe) cause I might go for ATi Crossfire cards later and this supports Crossfire....

I'll let you know if its def the PSU thats faulty as its arriving later today. If it is then its a nice board to have.

Post by **Eagle** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:31 pm

So my current chip is a AMD Athlon "Barton" XP 3000+ supposedly runs at 2.2 ghz

The Athlon 64 3800+ "Venicecore" is only 2.4 ghz.

So whats the big difference?

Post by **Richie** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:51 pm

Its 64 bit (versus 32bit)

Its an X2 chip AFAIK meaning dual core.

So altho the speed is not much diff, it will do things a lot lot faster due to the 64 bit architecture and dual core (convert to XP64 edition)

Post by **mcmav** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:01 pm

the board with dual agp or pcie is an asrock board but tbh if yer going for new cpu I'd ditch the 9800 as it'll become yer bottleneck.

As rock is the board I'm thinking of for a cheap upgrade as I've got a x800 xtpe thats still cutting the mustard atm and is agp so dual board will mean I can always go pci-e at a later date when its grinding to a halt.

the 3700+ san diego core cpu meant to be a good one as well I put one in brother in laws machine and its fine even at stock though they are supposed to be fair clockers. Dunno how easy it is to get a hold of though.

Hmmm just had a look for said board and looks almost impossible to source one

Post by **Trig** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:13 pm

I went from the Barton 2500 (oc'd to 3200) to the 64/3200 and its loads faster, so many internal changes its untrue.
I had the x2 3800, which is basically 2 of the 3200's bolted together.

Dont bother with Windows XP64, its crap and IMHO a stopgap until Vista..

Post by **Richie** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:41 pm

I am gonna install X64 when I finally get my rig up and running. Its either that or just plain old XP till Vista comes along so I might as well

Post by **Hippy** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:42 pm

If you're building this with the thought of running Vista, bare in mind vista will require DX10 compatible gfx cards, now is the wrong time to buy gfx cards

Post by **Trig** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:46 pm

Now is the wrong time to upgrade period IMHO, things are changing everywhere..

As for running XP64 Richie I wouldnt bother, driver issues etc, unless ur just running it on ur test rig for a while I'd stick with normal XP..

Post by **Richie** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 4:53 pm

I ran X64 before and had no problems Trig.... I beleive there are drivers for 99% of hardware on X64 now (100% of my hardware has support)

Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:33 pm

Hehe I'm still on my socket 754 AMD64 3200 with a meg of cache and thats still fast enough for most of what I do. wouldn't mind swapping the grafics card to a Leadtek 7900GS mind as the only real upgrade from the 9800pro.

Think this rig's good for at least another year if I upraded the grafics.