Any Point in getting AGP/PCI mobo anymore?

pim69

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I have a crazy old mobo and processor with an amd 3200+ processor, and an AGP ATI x1950pro video card.

Is there any point in looking for a mobo with both PCIe and AGP to retain my video card till budget allows a new PCIe, or is onboard video equivalent to my 1950pro? I am primarily looking to upgrade due to having to set SC2 to all minimum settings to be playable, and still not reliably playable at anything above 2v2 multiplayer (3v3 is pushing it).

I have to buy processor, RAM, mobo to start, and I'll be stretching my budget to manage those so I am interested to know if I'd be wasting my time getting a mobo supporting both AGP and PCIe if the onboard video now is roughly equivalent to my old (previously decent) agp card.

thanks.
 
Better off waiting to upgrade until you have the $ ready -- wasting another $50 to $100 on a MOBO (those few with both AGP and PCI-e will not support newer CPUs anyway so why throw the money away) to reuse the AGP card is going to make it that much longer before you can afford the upgrade (or will make you make other sacrifices!!)

How much did you have in your budget ?? -- reusing the case, DVD drive, HDD, Monitor, PSU, Keyboard, mouse, speakers, OS will save quite a bit and make upgrading to a decent new system fairly affordable. I did the same back in January and even buying a new case - keyboard and mouse only spent $500 for a system that does gaming well (PII 720 unlocked to a quad @ 3.2GHz., 4GB. RAM, Sapphire 5770 ) so it can be done pretty cheaply if you look around
 

pim69

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Well I'm probably trying to stay around $300 canadian for now, I don't even have that money yet I'm having to save bits here and there. I have been building my own pc's for a long time so I know I can't get a video card worth buying with that budget, so I guess I'll stick with onboard video for now. I'll probably be playing primarily sc2 for a while anyways, which is obviously no FPS demanding monster.

My HTPC build (with 3tb capacity, 3tb backup) killed my usual budget for upgrading my gaming pc last year, but even sc2 runs so horribly I'm very motivated to consider even on-board video so I can get my cpu upgraded.

BTW, I have not priced anything out yet, but my past experience has always been that mobos for AMD cpus are cheaper than Intel, and with that considered in price/performance of the cpu, have always edged out my preference, though I'm not opposed to considering alternatives.

My mobo needs would be some USB3 preferred for future proofing, as well as at least 6 SATA ports. I can't find anything with both ESATA and USB3 unfortunately, which is a bit of a problem for me because I have a 4 drive enclosure with usb2 and ESATA, which requires a"port multiplier" ESATA port (not raid), which I know motherboards support but I'm not sure I can get a port multiplier supported ESATA PCI card. I imagine they exist so I think getting the pcie card is better than not having USB3 for later.
 

pim69

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I cant seem to edit this, so I'll just say after reviewing the cost of PCIe cards with ESATA port multiplier support, I think I'd rather stick with an ESATA mobo and forego USB3 for now because I've got a big investment in the ESATA enclosure + hard drives.
 

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