PC Upgrade / Rebuild advice...

T4i

Biostar.......urg!

wolfman

You should be fine with going for a 939 Motherboard with AGP. AGP cards are slowing in development, especially with ATI now making PCI-E cards, but there's still quite a lot of room for you to upgrade. The ATI X800's are still around £250 and will provide top of the range gaming performance. So by the time you want to switch to PCI-E you'll probably need a new motherboard and CPU anyway.

If you're looking for a good 939-pin AGP board, look up the MSI K8N Neo2 and the Asus K8N. These two are two of the best regarding performance. Try to go with a board that has the nForce3 chipset, it's the best of the chipsets available. I personally have the MSI board and it's very good.

As far as graphics are concerned, get a cheap ATI 9800 Pro in there, they still perform very well and it won't set you back more than £100. I still have an ATI 9700 Pro (with an AMD64 3500+) and can run games like Half Life 2 and Battlefield 2 without any problems.

Finally, memory, try and get about 1gb of ram. Matched if possible so you can run it in dual configuration. 1gb of ram should cost you around £60-70

wolfman

T4i wrote:

Biostar.......urg!

Think I'll second that.

ribenagirl

If you want to post your spec then happy to help you check it's all compatible - or else try here, which is where I go when I'm doing a new build for some advice:

https://www.buildyourown.org.uk

The forums there are ace. If you have the AGP/ PCI-E debate with them there, you'll most likely be advised to go PCI-E if you see yourself upgrading and definitely socket 939 for futureproofing.

Have a look at the 6600GT graphics card - far superior to the 9800 pro (and therefore it'll last you a bit longer) for only a few squids more (cheapest I've seen on Ebuyer is £114 for a PCI-E version).

wolfman

ribenagirl wrote:

If you have the AGP/ PCI-E debate with them there, you'll most likely be advised to go PCI-E if you see yourself upgrading and definitely socket 939 for futureproofing.

True, but how future proof will the rest of the components be. There are still upgrades available with AGP (like the X800), and by the time you do have to switch you'll need a new motherboard and cpu anyway.

ribenagirl wrote:

Have a look at the 6600GT graphics card - far superior to the 9800 pro (and therefore it'll last you a bit longer) for only a few squids more (cheapest I've seen on Ebuyer is £114 for a PCI-E version).

I wouldn't say "far superior". The 9800 Pro (around £80) still holds it's own (have a look on Toms hardware), but the 6600GT (around £120 for a decent one) is a better card, but the cost difference is around £40-50, which on a budget is quite a lot. If you can afford it though the 6600GT offers the best bang for your buck. There's also an AGP version of it too.

rchddap1

Thanks for all the help guys, but my main reason for posting was to work out whether it is worth spending some of my new PC budget on a new graphics card, or to spend in on other things....like a better processor, or more memory. From what I understand my current AGP will quite adequately do the job.

The point was that I don't want to spend £100 on a new graphics card...especially if I didn't really have to. Not too bothered abut futureproofing, or a machine that is top of the range (for 5 seconds at leat). My card will do the job, so I will look for an AGP Skt 939 board and put some of the money that I could have spent on graphics to the processor.

wolfman

Ok, one note regarding that though. Depending upon the game, it'll rely on the graphics card and cpu differently. For example Half Life 2 is known to be quite processor intensive, whereas Doom3 relies a lot more on the graphics card.

I've currently gone down the path that you seem to be taking where I've upgraded everything apart from my 2.5 year old graphics card. Mainly because I do a lot of programming, encoding etc... and don't play games as much these days. I can though, still play all of the latest games and in a reasonable level of detail too so you should be safe. Getting an AGP Mobo, will allow you to use your current card for now, and you can always upgrade further down the line should you feel necessary.