Looking for a little advice.
I currently own a rock-stable A7N8X/Athlon XP2700-based system with an ATI Radeon 9700 pro GPU and 768Mb of PC3200 DDR ram. I'm a 39 year old gamer, and want to move to the next level in anticipation of Half-Life 2. Had no problems with running Doom 3, artifacts or otherwise.
This is my question: (and yes, I trolled the forum looking for the answer already)
I want to move to the 939-based Athlon-64, but am unsure of two things;
AGP 8X or PCI-E? If I'm only running 1 6800 Ultra or X800 (this is about all I can afford!), can PCI-E give me the same framerate as a single AGP 8X? The reviews only tell you what's achievable with 2 GPU's vs AGP.
EIDE-based HDD or SATA RAID? Why?
BTW, who makes the best mobo? why? I've had bad experiences with MSI and Epox. My ASUS board is ok, but I don't think it's great.
I've been building my own PC's for about 11 years. I've always been able to keep up with technology, but lately, it's moving faster than i am. Could use a little help.
The most important thing to me is legacy support. I upgrade every 3 years, and if PCI-E and the 939-pin package is going to be like Slot A, I'm not interested.
Thanks
Kev
I currently own a rock-stable A7N8X/Athlon XP2700-based system with an ATI Radeon 9700 pro GPU and 768Mb of PC3200 DDR ram. I'm a 39 year old gamer, and want to move to the next level in anticipation of Half-Life 2. Had no problems with running Doom 3, artifacts or otherwise.
This is my question: (and yes, I trolled the forum looking for the answer already)
I want to move to the 939-based Athlon-64, but am unsure of two things;
AGP 8X or PCI-E? If I'm only running 1 6800 Ultra or X800 (this is about all I can afford!), can PCI-E give me the same framerate as a single AGP 8X? The reviews only tell you what's achievable with 2 GPU's vs AGP.
EIDE-based HDD or SATA RAID? Why?
BTW, who makes the best mobo? why? I've had bad experiences with MSI and Epox. My ASUS board is ok, but I don't think it's great.
I've been building my own PC's for about 11 years. I've always been able to keep up with technology, but lately, it's moving faster than i am. Could use a little help.
The most important thing to me is legacy support. I upgrade every 3 years, and if PCI-E and the 939-pin package is going to be like Slot A, I'm not interested.
Thanks
Kev