Not ready for full upgrade, pls help with work around

lurky

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Hi. a full upgrade is not in the budget right now and i want to know if I can do a work around with my existing system so I can get bioshock working.
here are the specs of the system i built a year or two ago..

Asus A8V deluxe (dont think this has pci express)
Athlon 64 2000 MHZ
1 gig of ram
Radeon x860 APG
Win xp

I would spring for a GOOD motherboard now if I could use my existing ram and cpu, then get up and running with a cheap pci express video card... and then upgrade cpu, ram and video card later....

But is there a chance a good mobo that could take this old ram and cpu and still accept newer as well?

thx
 

rgeist554

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I doubt any new motherboards will support your old equipment. If you're looking to upgrade your entire system, just ask and we'll try to give you an idea of what to get.
 

slicessoul

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Question: "is there a chance a good mobo that could take this old ram and cpu and still accept newer as well?"
Answer: No. Too bad you need to upgrade you cpu... explanation following:

- First, you don't have an Athlon 64 2000+ since it does not exist. The lowest model was a 2800+ for socket 754. You got a socket 462 Athlon 2000+ using FSB and with not memory controller on-die that is completely different.

Secondly, your graphic card does not exist too. You must have a radeon x850 from ATI then.

slicesoul is right: You need to upgrade pretty much everything there to play anything recent like bioshock. You got two choices there: Upgrade cpu only if you don't have much to spend OR spending a bit more to get a new mobo and cpu.

CPU upgrade only: get a barton 3000-3200+ (socket 462 of course)
CPU & Mobo upgrade: get an Asrock 4COREDUAL-VSTA motherboard paired with a e2xxx or e4xxx CPU.

The first upgrade path will play most games for the time being but won't be futureproof at all. The second upgrade path will support your AGP graphic card and has a PCI-e slot in case you want to upgrade later. It supports DDR1/DDR2 as well. That path will run any recent game.

Hope it helped you a lot.
gg.

Take it easy there Nova. Maybe he's not familiar with PC specs.
To the OP, you need to save your budget for the upgrades. Good luck.
 

rgeist554

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Take it easy there Nova. Maybe he's not familiar with PC specs.
To the OP, you need to save your budget for the upgrades. Good luck.
Yep, don't try to "patch-work" or upgrade your PC piece by piece. You'll only be disappoint by the performance it gives you. So take slicessoul's approach here.
 

piratepast40

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I was in the exact same position with an ASUS A8V. There was a time when it made sense to do a few upgrades but that time has passed. You've got too many components that are now 3 or 4 generations behind. s939 chips and mobo's are getting difficult to find. If something breaks, you're stuck with trying to find out of date replecements that don't provide an upgrade. Same with the DDR RAM and AGP card.

You can upgrade the board with either an Asrock dual VSTA or with a Foxconn 6150 (pcie) but you've still got the problems I talked about above.

You weren't specific about your processor but I'm assuming it's single core. I believe all the A64 3200+ thru the 4000+ were considered 2000mhz. Not that there's anything wrong with the processors, it's just that the platform is no longer supported by the industry.

Let's face it, the only thing you could reasonably save (for what you want to do) is your RAM but you need to buy another gig anyway so that's not even cost effective. Sorry man - that's the way it is!
 

Wolfshadw

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If you want to nitpick, the OP stated:

Asus A8V deluxe (dont think this has pci express)
Athlon 64 2000 MHZ

In other words, he's got a s939 Athlon 64 3200+ running at 2000 MHz (2.0GHz)

An upgrade to a dual core processor (X2/Opteron) and upping the RAM to 2 Gig would be a good start. He could then upgrade to an X1950Pro or 7900GS graphics card when finances allow.

-Wolf sends
 

piratepast40

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Wolf - LOL - ya, didn't want to give people a hard time because they didn't read that. It's more fun to watch as people guess and then come up with some really oddball socket and processor combinations. At one time, the A8V was a pretty awesome and popular mobo.
 

rodney_ws

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What an ungrateful piece of dog ****. A stranger comes here, asks for opinions, gets them, then says something like that?!? Just because people don't give you the answer you want doesn't mean they're not being helpful. If anything their brutal honesty was helpful... although apparently under appreciated.
 

lurky

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hey maybe youre too used to office sarcasm, i was thanking everyone for their comments, I agree that my pc is too old too too upgrade. I'll hold off and do a total overhaul next year.

off topic- do you really want to be associated with that cave man show?
 

shawn26il

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Check it man, here's another option.... How much do you have to spend?? If you got say 200 you can work with that......

Disclaimer, do your research before buying anything....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813185083

About 43 bucks there....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220088

28 bucks there..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127285

say bout 70 here...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103774

Then 66 there

So that would get you started, and that board I believe has 2 IDE channels which would let you reuse your old hard drives and cd/dvd drives....

You figure 207 there plus 15 bucks for the shipping...

say 230 realistically. Then you probably could reuse your old case, PSU....I don't know your specs and what kind you have, may need a new one, but you should be able to stay under 300 bucks. That would give you a newer system, and something to work with as later you could add faster processor like a 6400, etc. Or upgrade video and ram. But why don't you look into something like that. PC chips is decent, my mom has one of those in her old Socket A system, still runs fine after 2-3 years.
 

zenmaster

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Not a bad setup Shawn, but the 8500GT will not be running Crysis in any usable fashiong. He will likely need to get closer to a $100 to $120 card before it can work. Just commenting so he does not get hopes up.
I also think a 2GB of ram may be needed to run crysis well. Still under $300 if the OP can scavenge together that much.
 

shawn26il

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If he looks on newegg though, they do have some 8500's factory oc'd to 600 mhz on the core for about 80, or 87 if he wants the 512 mb version. That may get him closer.
 

bobbknight

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Hmmm let me see;

Asus A8V Deluxe socket 939 motherboard. So it's possible to have a 2000MHZ cpu on it, if it is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

Video Card ATI AGP X850, so I would call an X860 a typo.

Now on to Lurky's desires, It's time to start saving for a new computer.
AGP is about to die, and skt939 is in lock step with it.

Save and build a mew machine, don't even waste money on what you currently have, it's not worth it.

As I always recommend start with a great power supply and build up from there.
 

lurky

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Hi,
Youre right radeon x860 was a typo.
I'll wait till bonus time and do a full upgrade.
Have specs on memory changed or can I still use the 1 gig from the old pc?

Also, when I built this pc I used the mid range system specs which is printed in PC gamer every month. Anyone aware of these? any opinion? I was planning to use them again for the overhaul. I can post them here, but its not in front of me right now.

Rodney the cavemen were not cool before the show either.