939 + AGP = Help....!

[piwanek]

I’m upgrading my AMD 2700+ to a AMD64 3500+ Venice system. All I'm getting is the CPU and a motherboard.

Also am looking at a fanless heat sink for the CPU: <A HREF="http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=370494" target="_new"> Thermaltake CL-P0019 Fanless 103 Fanless Cooler</A>

and later on replacing the heat sink with a <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118111" target="_new"> Zalman Reserator 1 cooling system </A>
with extra add-on: <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118218" target="_new">Zalman ZM-GWB1 VGA Water Block</A>, which will cost around 230 total. But that’s for later. Any comments, thoughts on water cooling in general and Zalman in particular are most appreciated.

Right now I have a A7N8X2.0 motherboard, which I have been happy with all though I haven’t used most of its extra candy. I’m going to keep the Asus board and the CPU, get a cheap HD and use it as a spare box. I have an old vid card that should work fine with it. No audio needed, since it has onboard audio.

Now to my biggest concern. I have a Tyan Radeon 9800 Pro, which I am still quite happy with. Might not be top of the line anymore, but works well for me. Problem is most 939 mobos have PCI express, which makes my Tyan obsolete. So I’m thinking, I'll get the Venice and a cheap mobo which has AGP and I’ll upgrade it when I get a new vid card, which will be later. I got the Tyan less than a year ago and I spent a good chunk of cash on it (at least according to my wallet) and I wont get a brand new vid card, just because ATI and nVidia and all the other hardware manufacturers want to make more money and come up with some new standard which leaves all the AGP owners in the cold. If you were in my situation and had a limited budget, what would you do? What would you get? All though I think I’m pretty set on the 3500 Venice.

And my last question is a new case. I’m bored with the Mid Tower I have, some generic beige case, and am planning on getting a Full Tower. I want to be able to get a mobo with support for multiple HD's later on so I can have 3-5 or more HD's later on. I do a lot of graphic work and video editing so even though I have 300+Gb's now I’m almost out of space. I have looked around for Full Tower cases, even though the Lian Li cases are very nice, they are a tad pricey for a case imo. I’m looking for a simple black case, all suggestions are welcome.

I apologize for the lengthy post, but I had to summarize my thoughts after spending a whole day looking for the "acceptable" upgrade.

Regards,
Peter

 

[ChipDeath]

Just buy an nforce3 board. There's lots to choose from.

I believe the MSI boards come fairly highly recommended. I have a Epox 9NDA3J board which I'm quite happy with, but that only has 2 SATA ports (as well as the 2 usual PATA ones), so I don't know if it would suit your requirements for lots of storage options. (I <i>do</i> have a 160Gb RAID array, but it's always been run from a separate PCI card) My board has a 'bigger brother', the 9NDA3+ (specs <A HREF="http://www.epox.com.tw/eng/products_content.php?ps=322" target="_new">here</A>), which has 4 SATA ports though.

I wouldn't honestly get <i>too</i> concerned about the PCI-Express issue. The current generation of top-notch cards are available in AGP, and I would expect at least the next gen will be too, so it's no biggie.

Sure, If I was building totally from scratch (or if I'd blown my 9800Pro up <i>before</i> I bought the parts, instead of a couple of months after :lol: ), then I'd probably go PCI-Express, but there's no performance advantage, so why care?

---
<font color=red>"Life is <i>not</i> like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapeńos - what you do today might burn your a<b></b>ss tommorrow."

 

[piwanek]

Well, Chip, the 9NDA3+ seems like a good card. I read somewhere its good for oc'ing as well. Ive never really fooled around with oc'ing, but if i get my temp down with all the cooling im planning on buying, I might at least give it a shot and see what happens. But if the system performs well without it I'll just leave it alone.

This probably is a stupid question, but how does the SATA work? Does it have to be a RAID or can you just plugin additional hd's and they show up as a normal HD?

As far as PCI Express, thanks for calming my nerves. What I really want to do is wait until ATI releases its MRWWTYAALEHSLI (Multi-Rendering-We-Wont-Tell-You-Anything-And-Leave-Everyone-Hanging-SLI). And maybe get two vid cards if and when I can afford it. Its not really a priority, since I only game occasionally. Besides, processing power is more important to me, than fram rates.

 

[pat]

This probably is a stupid question, but how does the SATA work? Does it have to be a RAID or can you just plugin additional hd's and they show up as a normal HD?

SATA is only the interface between the controller and the HDD. The HDD is an IDE one. So how does it work? It works like an IDE disk plugged on an IDE controller that can be use as a normal IDE or as a RAID IDE controller. You may need some drivers to have the controller to be recognized by XP especially if you use RAID for the controller you connect your drive on, or if the controller doesnt have native support, like the SiL or Promise controller found on some board.

So, SATA doesnt work.. it connects!


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