Thinking to upgrade

so, here I am, about 1.5 years with this rig and I'm thinking of an upgrade. ATM I have:

mo/bo: MSI k8N-Neo4-F
CPU: Athlon 64 3500+
VGA: Asus x1600 Pro
RAM: 1 GB (2x512)
430 PSU
250 GB WD Disk.


now I have about 250 E (300 $) and I'm thinking of a new Vid-Card or a CPU-RAM combo.

1)Card

1a. Top card of the old generation 1950Pro/ 7950 GS

2a. Less powerfull new gen 2600Pro/ 8600 GS

The thing is that I have AGP and I don't know if any of these cards comes in AGP.

2)CPU-RAM

2x1 GB OCZ memory--70 E

Athlon X2 5x00+ Problem here: I have s 939. X2 is a AM2. However my mo/bo manual says clearly:
Designed for Socket939 AMD Athlon 64/FX/X2 Processors.

what's the deal? are there FX and X2 for 939?

Of course if there's any other suggestion I'd be glad so read it.

 

Look for a lower regular X2, I believe they stop at 4200+ and AM2 starts after that and won't work for you. I put in an X2 3800+ that cost about 40 euros and I'm very pleased with it. I don't know your board but you may need to flash your BIOS as I did. About your memory, I would just buy one stick and spend the rest on the best video card you can get. Of course, wait for other opinions.

 

I would suggest selling off everything and start with a NEW system. The AGP is a killer when trying to get NEW VideoCards...

I assume it is DDR Ram as well.

I'd sell the RAM, Motherboard, CPU, & Videocard and take this money and upgrade the whole PC. I would think you could get at least $250 for these parts so then you have $550 to work with.

 

well, with 550$ I can buy... half a PC. Starting from scratch is not an option right now. And that's if I manage to sell the lot.
The RAM is DDR2 but I in the back of my head I know my mo/bo is old. I'm thinking to upgrade in PCI but then would the CPU be strong enough for a nice new VGA or will it be a bottleneck?

 

If you're running XP then 1 Gig is sufficient for now, if Vista then you definitely need to upgrade.

Sell the motherboard & cpu off. Hopefully you get enough from this sale to purchase a NEW motherboard. Then you just have to buy a CPU. An AMD x2 4400+ is under $100.

Personally I would just put the RAM with the board and then buy a 1Gig stick as it is under $25 now.

Sell the videocard off separately. you should be able to get $40-50 for it on ebay.

If you lived close to me, I would offer you some $ for the stuff, as it still makes a nice system, just not high-end anymore.

 

I am running XP so RAM will stay as it is.

ok so we have:

sell mo/bo and cpu=60$ (?less?)
that's 360$

here are the compare lists within this cost range (~3x100$). I'd be grateful if you would help me pick the combo or if you come up with something more suitable, that is not on the lists.

 

Well here's what I can get in Canada...

Motherboard: MSI K9N-Neo
http://www.msi-computer.ca/product_info.php?cPath=22_29&products_id=210

CPU: AMD x2-4400+

RAM: 1Gig DDR-800

Video: ATI Radeon HD2600XT
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=369&card2=520

For all this it is about $450Cdn. or $315Euro.

 

There are rumours that the Radeon 3850 may be coming out in an AGP flavour.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/03/best_graphics_card/page5.html

 

I just noticed something very interesting when I took a look at my board's manual. It is not an AGP board! It has four 32-bit PCI slots and even one PCI_Ex16 slot. This means that i don't have to change my mo/bo in order to have a new card. But I still have a problem with the CPU. This is what I get on s939. Newegg compare. With some overclocking these AMD might be good enough.

 

*bump*:hyper

 

The opteron is the best single core CPU out there. With your board that will be your best option if you don't want to upgrade it...

Problem is you will be stuck with it as no-one will pay you anything for it down the road when you want to upgrade...


With your setup & $300 budget, I say get the CPU, & a better videocard!

 

Ok, I just returned from the puter store :hyper

I ended up in new mo/bo+CPU+RAM.

I decided that 939 would have to be upgraded sooner or later so I went for an AM2 platform. Asus M2N with an Athlon X2 5600+. I was looking for some cheaper RAM but OCZ SOE at 70 E was good. So, I spent my savings but the financial support commission (that's father ) was in a generous mood and I could get hold of an additional 100E for a new VGA. However the guy at the store said Ati drivers were not very stable yet and I didn't want to go straight to nVidia just because of the drivers so Video card purchase is postponed for a few more months. I guess my current 1600Pro will be paying the overclocking forum a visit ;P


That's about it guys, thanks a lot for the advice and tips, I'll let you knwo when (not if, when) something goes wrong as I put together the shiny new stuff.