PC Upgrade / Rebuild advice...

rchddap1

Hi,

OH wants to build a new PC, but I want to clarify a few things before I go searching for components from the likes of Ebuyer, dabs and Aria (any others?). At the moment he wants a Skt 939 processor & board. However, if I understand correctly chances are the new skt 939 board will need a PCI-Express Graphics card. However, we currently have a FX 5600 256Mb AGP graphics card.

I would much prefer to spend the cash on the board, processor, and memory, than on a new graphics card if I can get away with it.

I've been looking at PCIE graphics cards and they seem to start from around £50 (X300SE 128Mb), which I assume will be worse than what I have at the moment...hence my problem.

Essentially I'm looking for advice on whether my assumption about the cheap PCIE graphics card being worse than my AGP is correct. If so, what would be a decent equivalent of my FX 5600 card on the PCI Express slot.

Cheers.

boogiemaster

You can get 939 motherboards that have Vga like Asus
I have a cheap Pci card and mine is ok! It plays Battlefiled 2 and that game demands a decent graphics card.
I have the x600 and paid about £60-70 and it works ok for me and my games

Pci is the new vga and runs on a different system than vga, its just as good as vga or maybe better.
I can run two pci graphics cards on my asus motherboard, the two cards share the load.

Buy a 939 motherboard with vga and you can use your old card without buying a new one! :-)

rchddap1

Firstly I'm a Sims 2 addict so the graphics needs to be T&L compatible and a pretty good card (DirectX 9.0c compatible). Secondly a PCI Express card is not the same as a PCI card...they are 2 different slots...and VGA is definately not going to be an option. Thirdly, we only bought our AGP card 6 months ago (or there abouts) and its seems a waste of money to buy another so soon. Particularly when I suspect the PCI-Express card that we are considering is worse than what we have at the moment.

I would much prefer to spend £60-70 on getting more memory, or a better processor than on new graphics.

however, my original question still stands:-

Essentially I'm looking for advice on whether my assumption about the cheap PCI-E graphics card being worse than my AGP is correct. If so, what would be a decent equivalent of my FX 5600 card on the PCI Express slot.

blinky

You can get AGP Socket 939 Boards - there's quite a lot actually. I built a friends system using a Gigabyte K9NSC from Scan which a good value Nforce 3 AGP Socket 939 board, but not if you intend overclocking. (Only 2 SATA ports and it is known that the first two SATA ports on Nforce 3 are not frequency locked).

Nforce 3 boards are AGP. Via, Sis and Uli all do AGP chipsets but the Nforce 3 is reckoned to be the best.

Nforce 4 based boards are PCI Express. SiS, Uli and Via all have PCI Express chipsets but I don't think any boards are available (I know there are problems with the Via chipset).

Incidentally, becuase the AMD64 has an onboard memory controller and uses the Hyper Transport bus to communicate with the motherboard, the same motherboard chipset will work with socket 754 and socket 939.

rchddap1

At least that's some good news. Question is .... is it cheaper in the long run to get a PCI-E board & graphics card now....or to buy an AGP version and update the board and card later?

T4i

If you are a hard-core gamer who does nothing else but 'benchmark' his/her system agaisnt others then PCI-E is a good idea.

If however you just want to play the latest games stutter free with nice stability go for AGP.

Thing is people will upgrade mobos to accomodate PCI-E and then some new technology will come out like a 'AGP-Turbo' so you will be forever upgrading.

If you have lots of money and want the latest stuff go PCI-E, but AGP is more than suitable for the home user.

rchddap1

Put it this way...if I had enough to get a top of the range PC I could think of much better ways to spend the cash.

Sounds like its stick with the AGP...now I have to convince OH

blinky

I don't think anything yet is limited by the bandwidth of AGP. One of the DFI reps said on their forums that 82% of graphics card sales are still AGP.

T4i

Isn't anything above AGPx4 a waste still?

Joe_Bloggs

The Biostar Motherboard NF4UL-A9 is a socket 939 NForce 4 motherboard with both PCI-E and AGP slots. I've not looked far but I have not found one in the UK

MSI announced a graphics card with PCI-E contacts on one edge and AGP on the other.

J_b.

blinky

Joe_Bloggs wrote:

The Biostar Motherboard NF4UL-A9 is a socket 939 NForce 4 motherboard with both PCI-E and AGP slots. I've not looked far but I have not found one in the UK

J_b.

It's not strictly speaking and AGP slot. They call it an XGP. It's basically a hacked up PCI slot, so you won't get the AGP direct memory texture transfers (most important), Fast writes, Sideband addressing. It will also hog the PCI bus like something rotten. I wouldn't advise one for gamers. ECS also do similar boards.

From their site

Xtreme Graphics Port is Biostar's unique engineering solution of adding limited AGP graphics card support to the nForce4 chipset. The XGP slot is not compatible with all AGP cards but has been tested with AGP cards listed below.