Upgrade Disaster

[ctrob]

I was intending to wait until the Conroe release before upgrading my aging and failing Socket A Athlon PC. To tide me over until then I bought the case I wanted, plus replacements for my failed dvd-drive and graphics card (Ti4200 with a case fan strapped on...).

Unfortunately, the m/b appears to have died in the process rather wrecking my plans. There don't appear to be any practical AGP m/bs any more so it looks like the VGA is going back.

In the long term I want a high performance yet quiet system with DX10 for around the time Vista comes out. I don't mind whether it's intel or amd.

In the short term I want to waste as little cash as possible, while maintaining a working system - I'm currently failing at both lol.

For graphics I just need something to play stuff like WoW, so I'm thinking a GeForce 7600 GS card as they're silent and realtively cheap.

The core part of my system appears obsolete - SocketA Athlon, m/b and DDR-266 memory.

I'm quite tempted to fall back on a pre-Conroe plan of a (single core) Athlon64 3800+, 2GB of DDR2-CS4 memory and an nForce5 m/b. This would tide me over until the new year. That memory is at a premium at the moment but compatible with both Conroe and AMD going forward. My main concern would be whether this m/b would cope when new AMD cpus are released - obviously I'd have to dispose of the m/b if I switched to intel later - but also how reliable the m/bs are now.

Alternatively, I could buy the cheapest cpu, m/b and ram I could find and in 6 weeks time... The question is whether this be cheaper than the 1st option (assuming there's a price drop in the mean time), ignoring all the extra hassle. The CPU and RAM costs about £400 (in uk), so that could depreciate by about £200 - but over what time scale? I doubt the m/b price will change so much.

There doesn't appear to be an upgrade path to Conroe.

So in summary,
How stable are the current AM2 boards? (does anyone have one yet?)
How fast will the current AM2 depreciate?
How well will the current AM2 boards deal with the 65nm cpus coming out around xmas(?)?
Can I put DDR-266 memory in boards that quote DDR(1) support at higher speeds?
Can I put faster memort in slower boards?

Thanks.

 

[jimytheassassin]

If you're set on conroe or next gen AM2 why not just rebuild what you have. check computer geeks for old parts and barebones kits. spend $200 and wait. I don't know how that works for UK with shipping, but parts are still out there i'm sure.

 

[sailer]

The current AM2 baords seem stable, but on short supply. That should change fairly soon.

Not sure if you mean the CPU's or the motherboards. The AM2 CPU's will probably come down in price as soon as Conroe comes out. The motherboards will probably stay close to the same in price.

The current AM2 boards should handle the 65nm CPU's.

DDR-266 memory will not work. AM2 will require DDR2 memory, as will most other CPU's, like Conroe. If you mean simply putting slow memory in an otherwise comparible faster board (PC 2700 into PC 3200) it would probably work, but be slow. Then again, it might not work. Read the motherboard specifications to know for sure.

Faster memory in slower boards may or may not work. For example, you might put PC 3200 memory in a board that only recognizes PC 2700. The board would then either not recognize it at all, or would simply run it at 2700 speed. You cannot put DDR memory into DDR2 boards, or vice versa.

Hope this helps.

 

[gambit6259]

If you are going to build a system that is just to tide you over til conroe why go for a 3800+ AM2 cpu, when any of the lower end AM2 or Socket939's are light years above what you were using. You want to even considered going with a cheap dual core intel like this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116001

if you went with a little cheaper processor then you might want to consider getting the GF 7600GT which is a real solid midrange GPU.