What should I do "Upgrade Wise"

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kjoy064

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Jan 3, 2008
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Hello All, BTW great forum...

I have a question about upgrading my current pc and what should I do.
Current System:
S939 x2 4800+ STD not overclocked
K8NS-Ultra
6800GT agp
Gerneric Ram 2gb = NFI :)
Thermal TR550 PSU
Samsung 226BW 22" monitor

The question i'm asking is what should I do in the way of upgrading the system, first thought was a PCI-E mobo and a 8800GT or spending the $1200aud on E6750, 8800GT, decent ram & mobo.
I have found a few A8N32-SLI or deluxe boards on fleabay just i am just in 2 minds and am looking for guidence.

thank you all KJ
 
Either hold onto it for a server or another system or even possibly sell it and use the $ towards the new rig. It's up to you. I'd go for the new rig and use a 8800gt or 3870, depending on which way your going with the build. What resolutions do you game/use under? This will decide if you really need to SLI/Xfire or just use a single GPU solution.
 
It would be pretty easy to grab a PCI-E 939 board and use your current parts + a new GPU. That would make a nice computer. However, if you have the money and want to have some fun, do the full upgrade. All comes down to what you want to spend.
 
Personely, if Iwasn't doing a total upgrade, I'd just get a 1950 pro agp card. They are a little over $250 in Canada.
It should give you 50 to 100% more fps, in games./
The problem with that (or blessing maybe) is that going from Nvidia to ATI requires a clean OS install.
 
A 4800+ is not a bad processor at all.
I'd look at getting a PCI-E Skt939 board, put in an HD 3870 and keep that for a while so you can see how revised Phenoms & the new Intels do.
At the moment, I think you'd be crazy to upgrade your system fully.
I personally think it's just flushing money down the **** at the moment :)
 


Your situation is what I call the AMD conundrum, which I am really hoping that AMD avoids this during it's next platform change.

In this case the best upgrade, as opposed to system rebuild, is to go C2D using ASROCKs famous VSTA Dual board which will let you carry your RAM and AGP card. The board is cheap, but does not always run well with the new processor. I have the board currently, with 6320 on it and intermittent reboots that happen most often during Far Cry sessions, but also at radom when it's just idling. I've changed the GPU and the PSU, but it hasn't solved the problem. All drivers & BIOS are current. I used it to replace the AGP card and DDR RAM over time. However this is only a sideways step onto new technology platform, but may actually run a tad slower than your current set up until you buy a top video card. The PCIe slot has only 4 lanes so its impact on high end cards I can't tell you exactly, but have read that they run reasonably well. I have to be honest and say I wouldn't do it again, but depends on your state of desperation to get off a dessert island.

The 1950 XTX as suggested is a faster card and will enable you to lift the res a bit, but you already have a shader 3.0 card with most of the features the XTX offers and re configuration could be painful.

Option 3 is to change your mobo for PCIe one and get a DX 10 card of which there's plenty to choose at the moment, but the mobo's are scarce and expensive so tread carefully here. But a PCIe SLi 939 board could help quite a bit as there's still heaps of kick in that cpu of yours. I know because my home pc's got a 3800 X2 and just married it to a ATi 3870 and just finished Crysis right out at 16 X 10 med graphics so there's no reason to fret on the performance side of things just yet. You would also get the option of SLi with another 6800 GPU which would be really cheap now and give some considerable bang for the buck. E.g. 2 X 6600GT = ATi 850 XT and that's pretty darn fast.

If you go the whole hogg, just watch the FSB of the mobo's. Penryn cpu requires 1600MHz. We're not far from DDR3 implementation, so we know what that means for AMD's memory controller, because that's why you are where you are now, but Nehalem that coming will also have the controller on the die, so my gut feeling is we are warming up for a platform change on both sides of the fence. Given the current power of your rig I'd just keep as much cash in the pocket as you can for now.
 
If you can pick up a S939 PCIe board cheap, by all means that is what I would do. Don't listen to all the "Socket 939 X2 CPU's are old or outdated" nonsense. A Socket 939 4800 X2 is still a very solid performing CPU and coupled with a good high end video card will run any game out there just fine. For a small amount of cash, a PCIe motherboard off Ebay and an 8800gt or 3850/3870 can really put some kick back into your system.
If you do decide later to move on with a platform change, your new 8800gt or whatever card you buy will carry over to the new system, so this is not money wasted.
DON'T waste money on an AGP card. Spend a few bucks and at least move to a PCIe motherboard before you plop down money on a solid video card.
 
I had the same problem few months ago looking to upgrade to a better AGP card but ended buying 1950pro pciex. and picket up a new motherboard of ebay for less than the price difference up to the same in AGP flavor. I had a MSI nforce 3 ultra board and changed over to MSI oem nforce 4 ultra and did not even have to repair my windows install.
 
Thanks guys, the input has been usefull and the last things we all want to do is throw away money. If the 4800 can handle most things you can throw at it i'm half way there. I think i might end up going with the pci-e board and 8800gt.
 
If you are going nvidia I have to ask if you plan on running games at high res or using two cards. I really wanted to get an 8800gt but went with the 3870. Mostly because I don't have an nvidia chipset and i plan on getting a monitor that runs resolutions 1900x1200. My x38 chipset lets me run crossfire but not SLI, and for high resolutions you can't beat two cards. Not to mention you can get two 3870's for around $440 bucks and they will beat a 8800 ultra a lot of times. The downside? crossfire can be finicky and support for it is lacking in a lot of games. Hopefully by the time i get my monitor and second card crossfire starts working as it should!

Also the 8800gt isn't looking as nice with the 8800gts (g92) out. I see one on newegg for $310 after $20 mail in rebate!

I know this isn't your primary question but it's still an upgrade consideration (maybe).
 
Ah, after reading a few posts...

Get the 939 / PCI-e motherboard and a 8800GT 512MB.

Then, you can buy another Mobo/CPU/RAM maybe a year or 3 later.
 
At the minimum get a PCI-e mobo for a new style GPU. I'm currently running on a s939 mobo w/x2 4200+ with a 7900gs and can play any game out there. Yes I can't have high settings, but I'm on a 19" WS, which is 1440x900. I'm only lacking an updated GPU and have been running on this config for about 2+ years :) If you can get a s939 mobo and just upgrade to a PCI-e GPU, I think would be the smartest and cheapest upgrade to do. I remember reading somewhere that DDR and DDR2 difference wasn't too much, so still running on DDR isn't as bad as some make it out to be.
 
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