The real cost of updating to PCIe from AGP

C

Comte

Gawd
Joined
Jan 2, 2001
Messages
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Whenever anyone asks about a new AGP video card, certain individuals on here jump on them to update their systems to PCIe and extoll on how cheap it is. Usually advising some crap motherboard to get to PCIe....Well, I just updated, so here is the true cost of updating to PCIe..

I had a PIV 3.4EE and started getting a mysterious beeping warning from the motherboard that I couldnt track down. So I decided to update. But I wouldnt pick up some crap components I wouldnt be happy with and had to replace in 6 months.....So here is what I picked and the prices...(all from Newegg)

ABIT IP35-E LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard $89.99
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $79.99 w/$25 rebate MIR
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro 550 RS-550-ACAA-A1 ATX12V / EPS12V 550W Power Supply $99.99 w/50.00 MIR
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz $189.99
SAPPHIRE 100213 Radeon HD 2900GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 $149.99 w/$20.00 off promotion code

Grand total $609.95 Before taxes and shipping. (not counting the rebates because who knows if they will actually come through...

Now, I could have skimped on the processor, and i certainly did skimp on the video card, but when you update to PCIe and you dont want junk, but want to make a system that will be worth it, I think I did pretty good. But it is not as cheap as some on here would have you believe, for quality components your going to spend $500 or more easy..
 
Comte said:
for quality components your going to spend $500 or more easy..
Click to expand...
I spent more than that on my video card alone..:)
Was it worth it?..yeah, to me it was, some would argue, but hey, its only money......
 
Your right, and I was really tempted to get a ATI 3870 for $249.99, but for now the 2900 GT will be enough. I figure around June I will sell this one and get me a better one then. But my point is that the PCIe upgrade is not as cheap as some make out....
 
Crosshairs said:
I spent more than that on my video card alone..:)
Was it worth it?..yeah, to me it was, some would argue, but hey, its only money......
Click to expand...

Do not underestimate money!


Also, you're pretty much right. When someone says upgrade to PCI-E, you're pretty much getting a new build.
 
PCIe came out all of a sudden like 3.5 years ago. :p In the meantime, you would have had to make a decision to stick with AGP even though AGP support was dying off.

While you might not be happy unless you replaced a whole long list of items, others could be happy reusing as many parts as possible. There are DDR1 LGA775 boards (and S939 of course) with a PCIe x16 slot, so the minimum necessary upgrade would just be a motherboard and video card, costing less than 1/2 what you spent. What you get for the extra money is new memory, much faster CPU and a new PSU (in your case, a new PSU was probably a requirement due to the power hungry 2900 video card).

Your post should be titled: "The real cost of a near whole system upgrade, because when I do it, I do it big" :p

BTW, I think that same PSU is free after a $50 rebate at svc.com.
 
Comte said:
Your right, and I was really tempted to get a ATI 3870 for $249.99, but for now the 2900 GT will be enough. I figure around June I will sell this one and get me a better one then. But my point is that the PCIe upgrade is not as cheap as some make out....
Click to expand...

Upgrading to PCI-E can be cheap you just chose not to go the cheap route...

You damn near got a whole new computer for $600 how is that not cheap?
 
"a new PSU (in your case, a new PSU was probably a requirement due to the power hungry 2900 video card)."

Actually it was the new 8 pin connector on the motherboard that caused me to get a new powersupply because my previous 500w powersupply was fine for the 2900 GT.....

"There are DDR1 LGA775 boards (and S939 of course) with a PCIe x16 slot, so the minimum necessary upgrade would just be a motherboard and video card"

But, if thats all you upgrade, where do you go from there? You cant go duo, you cant really update your memory....You might buy yourself some time but you wont fix the problem...I saw some ddr 775 board a year or so ago, but I havent seen any in at least that amount of time...Those were stopgap boards at best.....

So, basically, to update to PCIe your going to spend way more than you are saying...
 
Comte said:
"There are DDR1 LGA775 boards (and S939 of course) with a PCIe x16 slot, so the minimum necessary upgrade would just be a motherboard and video card"

But, if thats all you upgrade, where do you go from there? You cant go duo, you cant really update your memory....You might buy yourself some time but you wont fix the problem...I saw some ddr 775 board a year or so ago, but I havent seen any in at least that amount of time...Those were stopgap boards at best.....

So, basically, to update to PCIe your going to spend way more than you are saying...
Click to expand...

So basically because you failed at finding something that is widely available and has been for some time your saying its expensive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157115

Thats how i made my way to 775/PCI-E. Those boards have been around some time and asrock has a large variety of hybrid type boards like that one.

Again because you chose to go the expensive route dont mean that it really is and i dont believe you couldnt find a 775 board with DDR1 slots you probably just didnt look... They where there the whole time and cheap too.
 
No, I did what your going to have to do soon and committed myself to the upgrade that was on the table...

How high is your front side bus? Mine is 1333, How much memory can your board use? I can put up to 8gb on it, when I go to 64 bit vista sp1 or so....How much is that dual memory and video bus's costing you in performance? Whats the speed of that VIA chipset compaired to my P-35 chipset?

No, if you are going to update to PCIe, and you want a decent system with any longevity or performance at all, your going to have to spend more than your advertising....A lot more..
 
Comte said:
No, I did what your going to have to do soon and committed myself to the upgrade that was on the table...

How high is your front side bus? Mine is 1333, How much memory can your board use? I can put up to 8gb on it, when I go to 64 bit vista sp1 or so....How much is that dual memory and video bus's costing you in performance? Whats the speed of that VIA chipset compaired to my P-35 chipset?

No, if you are going to update to PCIe, and you want a decent system with any longevity or performance at all, your going to have to spend more than your advertising....A lot more..
Click to expand...
That's all strictly your own personal choice. And for some reason you've decided your way is the only way and trying to thrust your opinion down everyone's throat. We don't care, go away.
 
Comte said:
No, I did what your going to have to do soon and committed myself to the upgrade that was on the table...

How high is your front side bus? Mine is 1333, How much memory can your board use? I can put up to 8gb on it, when I go to 64 bit vista sp1 or so....How much is that dual memory and video bus's costing you in performance? Whats the speed of that VIA chipset compaired to my P-35 chipset?

No, if you are going to update to PCIe, and you want a decent system with any longevity or performance at all, your going to have to spend more than your advertising....A lot more..
Click to expand...

Man...

Point is you CHOSE to go the expensive route. You could have gotten a hybrid board and been just fine but you wanted more and better which is why it cost you more. Just because you wouldnt be happy with a hybrid board dont mean someone else wont.

If your only goal is to upgrade from AGP to PCI-E those boards do just fine. Longevity is such a relative term in the tech industry. What longevity is to you may be different than what it means to someone else.

For the record i dont use the asrock board any more i now use a DS3 and am current. For me it was about being able to piecemeal my upgrades one at a time and it only cost me $50 to stretch out my upgrade process so i didnt have to just drop all of the money at once. I consider that money well spent.
 
1. Duh. Stuff costs money.

2. $600 for a new computer, big deal.

3. Sounds like your old hardware needed to be replaced anyway, mysterious beeping would be a good indication of that.
 
Menelmarar said:
That's all strictly your own personal choice. And for some reason you've decided your way is the only way and trying to thrust your opinion down everyone's throat. We don't care, go away.
Click to expand...

You ( I didnt name any individuals, they appearently seem to be naming themselves) are lying to the new people on here when you say you can upgrade to PCIe cheaply. And now your upset that I called you on it..Maybe its the people who are putting out bad info on the cost of upgrading that should go away. But you do what you want....I would never presume to tell someone to leave a informative forum such as this if they disagreed with me....
 
pfunkman said:
Man...
For the record i dont use the asrock board any more i now use a DS3 and am current. For me it was about being able to piecemeal my upgrades one at a time and it only cost me $50 to stretch out my upgrade process so i didnt have to just drop all of the money at once. I consider that money well spent.
Click to expand...

So, be honest, when you had your hybrid board up and running, were you truely happy with it, or were you always wishing you had gotten something better? You really liked that VIA chipset? You had no problems you would put up with until you could get something better?

I do notice you upgraded, so you must not have been too happy with it....
 
around 650.00$ for cpu,mb,vc ram runs fine i think i have made a good investment
 
To be honest other than the second GTX, my sig was my upgrade from an old P4/AGP setup.
I could have went cheaper, but I didn't wanta to. :p
I gave my old setup to a co-worker. He's lovin the old and I'm happy with the new.

My point? You'll have to bite the bullet some time. I went with a total new setup. It can be done for much less. The longer you wait, the less likely any of your old can be carried over to the new.
 
Comte said:
So, be honest, when you had your hybrid board up and running, were you truely happy with it, or were you always wishing you had gotten something better? You really liked that VIA chipset? You had no problems you would put up with until you could get something better?

I do notice you upgraded, so you must not have been too happy with it....
Click to expand...

I wasnt supposed to be happy with it i bought it with the intention of piecing my build together like i said. My intention was never to stick with the board. While i had it it worked fine, did its job daily that is until i killed it. Flashing the bios from windows while doing too much on your computer is not reccomended apparently :p

Your completely ignoring the fact that you made a choice that made it expensive and if you would just look around you folks still running low end AGP systems obviously do not have the same expectations of their PC that you and i do. Your way was not the only way, you wanted better and you made a choice to pay for it that dont mean its set in stone that everyone else will do the same as you.
 
I don't get what the mystery is here. The OP says "people lied to me", I say "stfu". Newegg has all the information you need to figure out exactly how much an upgrade will cost. It's not a secret that if you purchase a new motherboard you might need new ram and a new processor. Of course you're going to be buying a new video card as well or you wouldn't need PCI-e. Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ what is your problem?!? Hardware is cheaper than it's ever been. Some people just don't get...anything. Why did I waste my time typing this?????
 
Not bad of an upgrade...but I have an AGP system and I still firmly believe it can hold its own! However AGP isn't supported anymore so I'm F***ed for gaming...
I've never been into high end gaming but when I make a new build I look towards the future expandability aimed towards gaming. I put pencil to paper and devised a complete (except monitor) new build with high expandability at ~$1000 depending on rebates. This includes quality components: 680i LT mobo with E6750, 2-4GB of fast 800mhz ram, psu (650w), 500mb HD (sata), 8800GT, case, 120mm fans, etc.

This is a gaming rig that is designed for SLI, not necessarily now but for future gaming in which a second 8800gt will be cheap and needed to keep up with games.

Does this make any sense?
 
A nicer way to say above is that the OP is not exactly the first person here to upgrade from AGP to PCIe. This isn't even close to the first thread discussing it either. I did my upgrades years ago for cheap, and yes I was happy.
 
Comte said:
You ( I didnt name any individuals, they appearently seem to be naming themselves) are lying to the new people on here when you say you can upgrade to PCIe cheaply. And now your upset that I called you on it..Maybe its the people who are putting out bad info on the cost of upgrading that should go away. But you do what you want....I would never presume to tell someone to leave a informative forum such as this if they disagreed with me....
Click to expand...

You upgraded your whole computer. to argue the only benefit you got out of this was a switch to pcie is bullshit. you couldve grabbed a bunch of cheaper components and not gotten half the shit you did. Ie you could've gotten an e4500 instead of a q6750, sold your p4 proc, and how much did that upgrade actually cost?

if you had a p4 already, im guessing it was a s775 in which case u need a new mobo and ram, thats it. You dont need an 8pin connector, so your psu argument was a joke.

Your true cost to upgrade to "pcie" is the card itself, minus what you can sell the agp card for. To argue that upgrading the cpu or mobo is part of that cost isn't fair, because these are upgrades that are benefits in themselves that you pay for. You're getting a newer, faster processor, and a motherboard with more features and that supports that processor. Ram is the same.
 
drzaus said:
Not bad of an upgrade...but I have an AGP system and I still firmly believe it can hold its own! However AGP isn't supported anymore so I'm F***ed for gaming...
I've never been into high end gaming but when I make a new build I look towards the future expandability aimed towards gaming. I put pencil to paper and devised a complete (except monitor) new build with high expandability at ~$1000 depending on rebates. This includes quality components: 680i LT mobo with E6750, 2-4GB of fast 800mhz ram, psu (650w), 500mb HD (sata), 8800GT, case, 120mm fans, etc.

This is a gaming rig that is designed for SLI, not necessarily now but for future gaming in which a second 8800gt will be cheap and needed to keep up with games.

Does this make any sense?
Click to expand...
It's my opinion, that you only do SLI if you are looking to go full out with a pair of GT's or GTX's or Ultras now for ultimate performance.

For future expansion to SLI. Lots of scenarios tend to happen.
1. Your 8800GT will go end of life, making it not drop in price, and/or hard/impossible to find.

2. New graphics technologies come out, DX10.1/.2/.3/DX11, or whatever, and dropping in a second "old" gen DX10 card may not be desirable. New generation cards are often more powerful just due to architecture enhancements.

I'd recommend if your not going bleeding edge, SLI now, to get a stable solid Intel board and just go mid range single GPU, then 2 years down th road, another mid-range performance GPU, and on and on. Selling your old one to a friend/family member/FS-FT forum to even less casual gamers.
 
Soul.Survivor said:
I don't get what the mystery is here. The OP says "people lied to me", I say "stfu". Newegg has all the information you need to figure out exactly how much an upgrade will cost. It's not a secret that if you purchase a new motherboard you might need new ram and a new processor. Of course you're going to be buying a new video card as well or you wouldn't need PCI-e. Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ what is your problem?!? Hardware is cheaper than it's ever been. Some people just don't get...anything. Why did I waste my time typing this?????
Click to expand...

No, I never said they lied to me, I said they lied to others. I have been in the computer field long enough to know that a major upgrade from agp to pcie was going to cost far more than those who advocate the cheapness of it are willing to admit....
Oh, BTW, you stfu is out of line with the rules on this forum.....

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=760666

(1) Absolutely NO FLAMING, NAME CALLING OR PERSONAL ATTACKS. Mutual respect and civilized conversation is the required norm.
 
Oh4Sh0 said:
You upgraded your whole computer. to argue the only benefit you got out of this was a switch to pcie is bullshit. you couldve grabbed a bunch of cheaper components and not gotten half the shit you did. Ie you could've gotten an e4500 instead of a q6750, sold your p4 proc, and how much did that upgrade actually cost?
Click to expand...

I got a e6750, not a quad.

if you had a p4 already, im guessing it was a s775 in which case u need a new mobo and ram, thats it. You dont need an 8pin connector, so your psu argument was a joke.

You guessed wrong, I had a 478 pin 3.4EE. And, yes, the new motherboard needed a 8 pin connector, go find the picture on newegg yourself.

Your true cost to upgrade to "pcie" is the card itself, minus what you can sell the agp card for. To argue that upgrading the cpu or mobo is part of that cost isn't fair, because these are upgrades that are benefits in themselves that you pay for. You're getting a newer, faster processor, and a motherboard with more features and that supports that processor. Ram is the same.
Click to expand...

No, because I had to have the new motherboard, ram, processor, and power supply to make the pcie card work in the first place....Or I could have just bought the video card, set it on the desk, and say I upgraded...All of those things are what it costs to move to PCIe. Dont be fooled, it is expensive to make the switch to PCIe..
 
I'm in the same boat as you were. I'm upgrading now without spending a fortune. So, I am skimping on a few things. I may end up getting the same MB as you, instead of a nice Asus Maximum Formula, and 4 GB of RAM, but probably go with a quad core and a GeForce 8800GT (it's been a while since I went with NVIDIA). I'm looking at about $900, but I'm also upgrading the case and power supply, too. (yea, I wanted more stuff!). That is what I need to play the games I want to play. Selling my old parts will probably net ~$200 (P4 3.0 s775, ATI x800, 3 GB DDR1).

All I want is a good PCI-E video card and quad core. I want to play World in Conflict at higher than 2 FPS Average! :) Yes, it costs a lot to upgrade to play the game (video card and CPU both make it more enjoyable!). But, I will have an overall better experience. I know I am getting more than just the PCI-E upgrade. But, in order to get the PCI-E I have to buy a new MB. And since I am doing that, I might as well go a little future proof and get DDR2 since it is cheap these days. And might as well upgrade the PSU to handle an additional load and support PCI-E and SATA. And those quads just look so tempting. Well, shit. See?! I could use DDR1 and my old CPU. But, I'd be CPU limited then, so a new motherboard and CPU would come in a few months anyway.

Hey, that's the game you play. It's natural. I could have stuck with my old PCI Matrox card. :)
 
Comte said:
Your right, and I was really tempted to get a ATI 3870 for $249.99, but for now the 2900 GT will be enough. I figure around June I will sell this one and get me a better one then. But my point is that the PCIe upgrade is not as cheap as some make out....
Click to expand...

The 3870 is $215 at Best Buy ;)
 
Somebody is stuck in the past here.
And who lied? People who claimed the upgrade is cheaper provided examples of components that can be brought. Whether the component is good enough is up the person making the decision. That POS VIA chipset people joke about probably has more features and is more reliable than a 5-year old AGP board that has one foot in the grave.
And don't forget the cost of not upgrading. As PCI-e cards become more available, the AGP users pay a premium on dwindling number of models available.
 
Comte said:
ABIT IP35-E LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard $89.99
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $79.99 w/$25 rebate MIR
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro 550 RS-550-ACAA-A1 ATX12V / EPS12V 550W Power Supply $99.99 w/50.00 MIR
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz $189.99
SAPPHIRE 100213 Radeon HD 2900GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 $149.99 w/$20.00 off promotion code

Grand total $609.95 Before taxes and shipping. (not counting the rebates because who knows if they will actually come through...
Click to expand...

OR:

GIGABYTE GA-P31-S3G LGA 775 Intel P31 ATX Intel Motherboard $72.99
Intel Pentium E2180 Allendale 2.0GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor $84.99
OCZ Gold Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit $61.99 + $10.00 MIR
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro 550 RS-550-ACAA-A1 ATX12V $99.99 + $50.00 MIR
PNY VCG88512GXPB G92 GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 $259.99

$579.95 before taxes and shipping (not including MIR) and will perform better in games than the rig you built. The lower L2 cache of the E2180 doesn't have as much of an impact on games as the gain you'll see from using the 8800GT and that CPU can easily be overclocked to 3GHz+ with that motherboard (I built my girlfrriends new rig with the same CPU and motherboard and passed her down my old X1800XT 512). Also, because of the higher multiplier of the E2180 you can afford to go with the cheaper DDR2 667 as opposed to the DDR2 800 you chose.

E2180 maximum overclock 1:1 using DDR2 667 = 3.33 GHz
E6750 maximum overclock 1:1 using DDR2 800 = 3.20 GHz

I've only just started playing around overclocking my girlfriends to see what the E2180 will do, but already have it at 3GHz which was extremely easily accomplished.

Ofcourse, I could also use the same GPU as you chose, bringing the total cost down further.
 
Not sure if its been mentioned but there are motherboards available that offer both PCI-E and AGP. It could be something to consider when you're transitioning, you could hold off on the video card for a while longer and save some extra cash after you upgrade the mobo/cpu/mem.
 
Source said:
OR:

GIGABYTE GA-P31-S3G LGA 775 Intel P31 ATX Intel Motherboard $72.99
Intel Pentium E2180 Allendale 2.0GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor $84.99
OCZ Gold Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit $61.99 + $10.00 MIR
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro 550 RS-550-ACAA-A1 ATX12V $99.99 + $50.00 MIR
PNY VCG88512GXPB G92 GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 $259.99

$579.95 before taxes and shipping (not including MIR) and will perform better in games than the rig you built. The lower L2 cache of the E2180 doesn't have as much of an impact on games as the gain you'll see from using the 8800GT and that CPU can easily be overclocked to 3GHz+ with that motherboard (I built my girlfrriends new rig with the same CPU and motherboard and passed her down my old X1800XT 512). Also, because of the higher multiplier of the E2180 you can afford to go with the cheaper DDR2 667 as opposed to the DDR2 800 you chose.

E2180 maximum overclock 1:1 using DDR2 667 = 3.33 GHz
E6750 maximum overclock 1:1 using DDR2 800 = 3.20 GHz

I've only just started playing around overclocking my girlfriends to see what the E2180 will do, but already have it at 3GHz which was extremely easily accomplished.

Ofcourse, I could also use the same GPU as you chose, bringing the total cost down further.
Click to expand...

I totaly agree with source, since the GPU is so mutch more important than the CPU for games, your rig is totaly unbalenced. Even if you don't want to OC.
 
I think the lesson we can all take from this is that everyone is entitled to an opinion, no matter how stupid or wrong it might be.
 
Comte said:
I got a e6750, not a quad.

if you had a p4 already, im guessing it was a s775 in which case u need a new mobo and ram, thats it. You dont need an 8pin connector, so your psu argument was a joke.

You guessed wrong, I had a 478 pin 3.4EE. And, yes, the new motherboard needed a 8 pin connector, go find the picture on newegg yourself.



No, because I had to have the new motherboard, ram, processor, and power supply to make the pcie card work in the first place....Or I could have just bought the video card, set it on the desk, and say I upgraded...All of those things are what it costs to move to PCIe. Dont be fooled, it is expensive to make the switch to PCIe..
Click to expand...

I didn't say you got a quad, did I?
And no, it doesn't need an 8pin connector for the 2nd time. The ones that have 8pin connectors can run fine using 4pin connectors. My MSI P6N has an 8pin connector, but im using the 4pin connector. Just because it HAS the 8pin connector, doesnt mean it NEEDS one.

And once again, your line is bullshit because you're upgrading your processor and ram, making them faster. So you're not just "moving to pcie". You're upgrading your ram and processor, which both provide speed/performance upgrades by themselves. your motherboard does too, and it also gives you more features.

And the difference in power usage by the p4ee is enough to buy a new a processor by itself.
 
I had to do the upgrade not too long ago, but I didn't want to buy new RAM since I had recently spent good money on memory. I grabbed myself an ASRock motherboard for $64 that has the ability to run either type of memory, and I kept my old memory, which per various websites (mostly Anandtech reviewed it I think), runs just about as fast as ddr2.

I got a used 7900GS from a friend for cheap, and grabbed a $299 Q6600 w/ the G0 or whatever stepping everyone was after at the time.

I'm still running the Q6600, 7900 GS on an ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA LGA 775 VIA PT880 Ultra ATX Intel Motherboard with my old 2GB 184 pin DDR 400 memory. It has been flawless for 9 months so far. No regrets at all (I was a bit worried about getting an oddball motherboard). I really am impressed with it.
 
Going to have to agree to what has been said in this thread.

My 6600GT failed me in my old P4 478 setup, so I looked for a nice and easy upgrade.

Ended up spending $950 on the rig in my sig.

al ;)
 
pfunkman said:
So basically because you failed at finding something that is widely available and has been for some time your saying its expensive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157115

Thats how i made my way to 775/PCI-E. Those boards have been around some time and asrock has a large variety of hybrid type boards like that one.

Again because you chose to go the expensive route dont mean that it really is and i dont believe you couldnt find a 775 board with DDR1 slots you probably just didnt look... They where there the whole time and cheap too.
Click to expand...

Thats pretty much what I did to upgrade to pcie, I just bought a new motherboad and video card.
 
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