agp & pci-e mobo?

[thefunkeymonkey]

Years since my last upgrade. Looking to upgrade again but cant afford to do it all at once. Would like to be able to use my current agp card (radeon 9700 pro) which I can just oc to a 9800 for that little bit extra. could do with a board with both agp and pci-e, im waiting till rtcw 2 comes out before i get a pci-e card. Will buy cpu/mobo/ram/psu at the same time.

I mostly use my pc for un raring large archives.

Currently got:

2000 xp
epox 8k3a+ (agp is x4 on this board)
768mb ddr (512mb 2100 generic crap, 256mb 2700 kingston)
sapphire 9700 pro (x8 agp)

Any suggestions on agp/pci-e combo mobo? Could I get more out of my graphics card with a better cpu/ram/mobo? Is my cpu and agp port holding back my 9700 pro?

cheers

 

[BUFF]

If you want to stick with socket A you will be out of luck.
If going S939 then the Asrock 939 DualSATA does what you want but you really ought to have better (PC3200) RAM to get the best out of 939 plus it's going end of life.

& you may find that you need a new PSU too with a modern board.

 

[thefunkeymonkey]

i forgot to mention im going for an amd64 and wont be overclocking it. I will be buying new ram (dual channel worth the extra £ btw?), just checked out that mobo and it can do up to pc3200, do you mean i should be going for a mobo that can take higher than pc3200?

the ECS K8T 890 by elite also looks like what i need, its a VIA® K8T890/ VT8237R chipset. The Asrock is ALi M1695 / ALi M1567. Does the chipset make that much difference?

500watt psu enough?

 

[nategarst]

I have used the Asrock board. Had no problems whatsoever with it. Was able to OC Athlon64 3500 to 2.55 on air, cheapy ram held me back. Never noticed any chipset issues with it either. GL.

 

[womble]

Hello there

Out of the two solutions you are looking at there I would definately go for the Asrock board as it has true support for both graphic card standards. I've had the Asrock for a fair while utilising my 9800SE and have had no problems whatsoever, drivers have been fine, Linux runs OK on it.

As far as I recall the Via chipset you were looking at doesn't do a true AGP and will probably be the cobbled together version where it wired into the PCI bus and shares the bandwidth from it. I couldn't see a review from a quick peek around however this 'AGP Express' solution has been featured on an Intel board reviewed here, I think you'll see that the Via cludge looks a bit ugly really.

AGP Express

For most games and stuff I'd expect an AGP card to be within a few percent of the same card in PCI-E format.

The Uli chipset is a much better solution by the look of it. The only thing missing on the chipset is SLI, which quite frankly for all but a small percentage of the population is a waste of time. The only other thing worth thinking about is the limited future of socket 939 (though the Asrock even has that covered insofar as it has a slot for AM2 card, not seen one tested yet and it'll be big and ugly from what I've seen of their previous version (754 to 939)). However if you're like me and like to live with a system for a few years it's not much of a problem. I'd like to go dual core when the X2 prices come down and the board'll take those happily.

You should be able to dig around this site for some benchmarks of the 9700 with the cpu you have and are considering, along with some archiving benchmarks.

Hope this helps.

Karl

 

[thefunkeymonkey]

cheers for the advise fellas, avoided a disaster with the VIA board and the asrock is only £33. aye karl im happy to live with a system for a few years so this seems like the mobo for me. Dont have a choice as my real hobbies are guitars and drinking, so thats where my cash goes


This is what ive picked out:

Asrock 939Dual SATA2 Socket 939
AMD Athlon64 3500 Venice Retail
Corsair Value Select 2x512MB PC3200
EZCool 600W ATX PSU 12cm Silent Fan
AKASA AMD64/FX51-53/Opteron cooler

Going for quite fan/psu as my current ones sound like a hover.

For around £220 delivered, cant complain.