Need advice

[aradiel]

I recently came into possession of a Gigabyte Radeon X850 XT PCI Express, and need advice on an upgrade.

My computer is currently running on an AMD Athlon 3000 XP (I think)
The motherboard is a Gigabyte RM something (I'll get the exact model later) so doesn't have PCI-Express

So, I'll need to upgrade my motherboard, cpu and memory.

Now, for the main questions (consider also that I only have roughly £300 to spend maximum):

1) What socket should I go for, so that the motherboard will be cheap, but I won't have to change the motherboard in order to get a better processor?
2) What processor? - I have had 64 bit ones recommended, but that would apparently mean that the games I want to run probably won't because they're not 64 bit, and that I'd need a 64 bit copy of Windows (which would make far too much of a dent IMHO, if it's true)

Thanks in advance!

Note: Sorry about the double topic post, but it appears as unreadable to me.

 

[shadowduck]

I recently came into possession of a Gigabyte Radeon X850 XT PCI Express, and need advice on an upgrade.

My computer is currently running on an AMD Athlon 3000 XP (I think)
The motherboard is a Gigabyte RM something (I'll get the exact model later) so doesn't have PCI-Express

So, I'll need to upgrade my motherboard, cpu and memory.

Now, for the main questions (consider also that I only have roughly £300 to spend maximum):

1) What socket should I go for, so that the motherboard will be cheap, but I won't have to change the motherboard in order to get a better processor?
2) What processor? - I have had 64 bit ones recommended, but that would apparently mean that the games I want to run probably won't because they're not 64 bit, and that I'd need a 64 bit copy of Windows (which would make far too much of a dent IMHO, if it's true)

Thanks in advance!

Note: Sorry about the double topic post, but it appears as unreadable to me.

1) 64-bit CPUs run 32-bit applications just fine. AMD won't sell you a non-64-bit CPU anymore. I would look at S939 for a budget upgrade, for AM2 if you want to spend a little more with thehopes of getting a new CPU with 65nm come out (for you thats a good option actually)

2) I would go Athlon64 3000+ AM2, and then upgrade in December to a 65nm CPU when it will matter. You won't see a night and day difference in performance until then.

3) Oh yeah, make sure you get DDR-800, 533/667 just doesn't get it done. Make sure the CLS is 4 NOT 5.

 

[aradiel]

Cheers for that.

Final question:

Are there any known compatability problesm between this card (or type of card) and particular motherboards - for example, would it work if the motherboard was NForce? I'm assuming that if it's a Gigabyte board there should be no real incompatbility problems.

I mainly ask this because years ago I bought a Geforce 4 Ti4200 but it wouldn't work, and after a while tech support said "Oh, yes. The card is incompatable with the motherboard" so I had to buy a new one. I obviously don't want to end up wasting my money, here.