Thinking of Upgrading

[gavinseabrook]

Hello all. Just wanted to get some advice on upgrading my MOBO, Processor, and Mem. My system specs are as follows:

Pentium 4 2.66GHZ processor
Soyo p4x400 Dragon Ultra Platinum MOBO
1GB Corsair XMS PC-2700 Mem
Soundblaster Audigy 2
Visiontek Radeon X1950 Pro (256MB vid mem AGP)
2 40GB Hard Drives
1 250GB Hard Drive
1 dvd burner
1 cdrw


I was thinking about moving from Intel to an AMD Processor. The reason I say this is because i just ran 3D Mark 06, and I noticed that on the CPU tests, my frame rate is just so weak. I did notice a good jump in FPS since I ditched my ATI Radeon x800, yet it still seems a bit laggy. I just want to know if someone has any advice to speed up my system a bit, or advice on an upgrade. Thanks in advance.

 

[Soap]

personally i would stick with intel for the upgrade, the core2duos are a great cpu and i believe good value.

for the the chipset the 965 seem to be the way to, however i cant recommend one at the moment as i dont know of one with agp.

for ram i would go for 2gb. if your not going to overclock generic should be fine.

 

[gavinseabrook]

Ebay Rocks

Well, I checked on E-bay and saw some guy selling MOBO/CPU combo, and it was an Intel Pm800 Mobo with a Duo core 1.87ghz for 118 With an AGP port. So I will probably go with that one. Let me Link you so you can tell me if it is worth it.
There is this Dual Core Pentium D:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...Sell_LogicX&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget

And this other one, little more pricey, but what do you think:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...Sell_LogicX&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget

 

[Soap]

both of those cpus are pentium d which is the old intel dual core which is inefficiant structure which runs very hot. the core2duos are a new structure which will run much cooler and faster.

ive had a look and saw two boards which might suit you.

Asus P5PE-VM. it has the older 865 intel chipset but supports the core2duos and has an agp slot for the graphics card. it uses ddr400 ram.

i do like asus boards and find they are very good quality however i feel it would be very limiting future wise.

the second board saw is the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA. this board supports Dual Channel DDRII667 (DDRII x 2 DIMMs) and DDR400 (DDR x 2 DIMMs) and also has a PCI Express aswell as an agp slot. this will allow you to upgrade your card later on if you choose to.

i am leaning towards to second board because it gives you options down the track. however i have never used an ASRock board and would appreciate hearing from other on whether or not they are a good brand.

 

[gavinseabrook]

Wow that seems like a nice board. I will see how much a combo will be with the processor.

 

[F1N3ST]

ASRock is decent, low end ASUS.

 

[JimShady23]

Not sure

I have used ASROCK mobo's a lot in office builds, they are extreamly stable and do what they are sappost to. Just dont expect too much in the feature department, however they are priced well and as F1NEST said, AsRock is owned by Asus so expect about the same quality.

However I read someplace and I am not sure if it is true, but that AsRock board with both AGP and PCI Xpress sucks for AGP performance. The article I read said that the AGP interface is just tied into the PCI BUS and is not True AGP, it just lets you use the interface but gives you standard PCI perfomance when used. So in other words, AGP 1x

Like I said that is just what I read an article on some time ago....Not sure if it is true.

 

[F1N3ST]

No its limited to 4X though i think.

 

[JimShady23]

Somthing

Yeah like I said I am not sure, wish I could find the article.........


But if what they said is true and it is just tied into the PCI Bus and only uses the AGP interface wouldnt it only be as fast as standard PCI ?

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Nah it has full AGP 4x/8x functionality. But, PCI-E performance is limited to only 4x instead of the full 16x. Check it out here.