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Looking for advice

P

peekama

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 30, 2008
Messages
105
I've been running an older machine for a while now, and I don't think it would be the best idea to upgrade to current tech with the nehelem (i7) and x58 chipset coming out. But, computers don't always agree with their owners, so mine insists on giving me constant data corruption errors, forcing me to buy something new. Does anybody have a recommendation on a socket 478 board with an AGP slot? Older boards like this don't have much of a selection.

As of now, the computer has:
Asus P4S8X mobo
Pentium IV @ 2.4 (a mobo with good overclocking support would be great)
768 Mb of generic ram
Ultra 600w PSU
ATI Radeon 9700
Running XP SP2
 
I don't understand why you don't think it will be a good idea to upgrade with Nehalem coming out. Do you plan on spending the premium dollar for that equipment? If not, you can land a C2 upgrade with mobo, RAM, CPU, and GPU for ~400 and have an incredible upgrade.

C2D E2180 - $69
Gigabye EP35-DSL3 - $85
A. Data DDR2 800 2x1 GB - $42

I will leave the video card up to you, but I know for sure you can score a 9600 or an 8800 for ~150. But I don't know if you are a gamer or not.

Just doesn't make sense to fork out money for a motherboard with that equipment, unless you are really planning on spending the money on Nehalem launch and trying to stretch the life of your current rig.

My 2 cents.
 
What's your budget? If you just need a stopgap solution that will utilize your current DDR RAM and AGP vidcard, then get the AsRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 and an E2180.

/*------------- <cut n paste> -------------*/
Just to let you know, you can still use your old AGP and DDR ram, if you're still interested. The AsRock 4CoreDual-VSTA or 4CoreDual-SATA2 supports both AGP and PCI-E, as well as DDR and DDR2. AT did some reviews on that board:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3024

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2810
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2813
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2814

Summary: The board is a good, budget stopgap solution for people who want to get more life out of their DDR and AGP stuff (and don't want to spend too much money). DDR400 is still fine for today's applications, and only high end NVIDIA graphics cards will be affected by the 4x speed of the 16x sized pci-e slot, but not by much (PCI-E Scaling Review).

$70 - Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Socket 775 Via PT880 Pro/PT880 Ultra Chipset DDR2 667Mhz, AGP & PCI-E x16 8-Ch Audio
/*------------- </cut n paste> -------------*/
 
Cmustang87 said:
Just doesn't make sense to fork out money for a motherboard with that equipment, unless you are really planning on spending the money on Nehalem launch and trying to stretch the life of your current rig.
Click to expand...

Well, I was waiting for the Nehalem launch in hopes that prices on everything currently out would drop. I figure that prices on current gen stuff will plummet when next gen hits.

That being said, I think I'm actually going to go for a C2 upgrade like you recommend. I'll have to spend a bit more than I told myself I would, but who needs to eat anyway? :D

enginurd said:
What's your budget? If you just need a stopgap solution that will utilize your current DDR RAM and AGP vidcard, then get the AsRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 and an E2180.
Click to expand...

Like I said before, I like the idea of doing minimal upgrades for now, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that its time to bite the bullet and upgrade. I mean, I'm lagging on single player Age of Empires III. Thats terrible.
 
peekama said:
Well, I was waiting for the Nehalem launch in hopes that prices on everything currently out would drop. I figure that prices on current gen stuff will plummet when next gen hits.

That being said, I think I'm actually going to go for a C2 upgrade like you recommend. I'll have to spend a bit more than I told myself I would, but who needs to eat anyway? :D



Like I said before, I like the idea of doing minimal upgrades for now, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that its time to bite the bullet and upgrade. I mean, I'm lagging on single player Age of Empires III. Thats terrible.
Click to expand...

Surprisingly, there will not hardly be a drop in C2D prices when i7 hits the market. The plan is to still keep C2D's as performance processors until the end of this year, and also as mainstream and value processors for another year or more. So Intel's recent price drop will probably hold here for a couple more months. Here is a chart you can see that shows how C2D's will still be very much the majority of the market for the next year. The i7 processors that are shown are in purple labeled as Bloomfield.
 
peekama said:
...Like I said before, I like the idea of doing minimal upgrades for now, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that its time to bite the bullet and upgrade. I mean, I'm lagging on single player Age of Empires III. Thats terrible.
Click to expand...

List a budget and we can start helping you out if you list your requirements.

tiraides said:
For those who are overwhelmed by the variety of choices out there, or are too lazy to do some research first:

If you post a thread asking for help in building your rig, the following are some of the questions you should answer -- or will have to answer -- before you get any help from us.

  1. What is your budget? Are shipping and/or taxes included within that budget?
  2. Where do you live? Where are you (planning on) buying everything at?
  3. Which components do you need to get? Which components do you already have? Which components are you going to reuse (from older builds)?
  4. What are you going to use your computer for? Which games/programs are you going to use?
  5. Do you plan on overclocking? Are you going to use water (or some other form of "exotic") cooling?
  6. Which monitor are you using? What resolution do you use? Are you using multiple monitors? Do you plan on buying a new/multiple monitor(s) any time soon?
  7. Which features do you want on the motherboard?
  8. How long do you want this system to last? Are you (planning on) making any incremental upgrades during that time?
Again, be as specific AND as brief as possible. But please -- do some research first, and at least check out some of the more recent "help me build" threads before posting your own.
Click to expand...
 
Well, overall I want to stay under the $400 mark. It would be great if I could buy some of parts now, and get the rest later.

What I want to reuse:
600w PSU
2 IDE DVD drives (I only really need one though)
2 IDE HDD (if need be I could let go of 1, its only 40 gigs)

I'd be willing to let go of 1 or 2 or those drives; I know a lot of newer mobos don't have 2 IDE ports like older ones do.

As a side note, I had seen that the Asrock mobo enginurd posted supports AGP/PCI and DDR/DDR2. That would be ideal for me, as I would like to reuse my video card (agp) and RAM (ddr) until I have the spare cash to upgrade further. I am concerned about the reviews I saw on the board though. A lot of people were getting DOA boards and bios issues. Does anyone have firsthand experience with this mobo?

Unless I could reuse my RAM and video card, I would have to buy everything else for the rig so;

What I would need to buy:
Motherboard
CPU

Anyways, I do want to overclock, so a mobo that OC's well is a plus. I used to be into gaming quite a bit, but as games got better and better, my comp couldn't keep up. I'd like to get back into gaming, so I had planned on upgrading my video card too. That's all that I can really think of for my needs, so the only thing left to really say, is that I don't mind paying extra if it means getting quality parts. I don't want anything crapping out on me here.

Thanks a bunch guys

EDIT:
I've been looking at the Asus P5Q Pro... anybody have an opinion on it?
 
P5Q Pro is supposed to be a great motherboard. I dont' know first hand, but I have read great thing about it.

If you're looking to game, I would honetly go with a C2D rig with maybe an AMD 4850.
 
You can get a PCI IDE controller card if you really want to keep all 4 IDE drives. They're typically $10 or so. I have a used one for sale in my FS thread, btw.

I have an older version of that board, the 775Dual-VSTA, and it works great. I actually have it for sale, too, lol. AsRock is Asus' budget brand, so their quality isn't as good, obviously, and it may take a while to get it setup just right.

I just did a build on the P5Q Pro, and its a great board. It OCs great and has 2 OC profiles, for saving OC settings. Its a solid board with a bunch of SATA ports.

Your budget is $400? hm...

$120 - 8800GT 512MB
$80 - E2200
$95 - GA-EP43-DS3L
$45 - 2GB DDR2-800
=======
$340 + tax and shipping

brhinton89 said:
http://www.pacificgeek.com/product.asp?c=211&s=1047&ID=89467&P=F This will allow you to still use your AGP card and upgrade later to a C2D or Pent D. I have 2 of them and they work just fine. One of them is still in the box brand new. PM me . :)
Click to expand...

Sorry, this product is no longer available.
But tell Us How Many You Need and We will try to find this sold out product!
Click to expand...

I just sold mine for $15, lol. If he still wants to go that route, I'd suggest the AsRock board I mentioned earlier instead of that ECS, since he can still move to a PCI-E card without an immediate mobo upgrade.
 
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