[ask] upgrade from socket A (AM2/C2D ?)

[sevendp]

my old rig:
AthlonXp 2500@3200
Gigabyte GA-7N400-L
Inno3D GeForce 6600GT AGP + Zalman VF700 Cu
Kingston KVR 768 MB Pc 2700
HD 120GB + 40 GB Seagate + Maxtor
PSU Thermaltake 430Watt Pure Power
LiteOn DVDRom 16x


I want to upgrade to Low budget AM2/Core 2 Duo (i'll do overclocking abit),
I Just want to buy new mobo, processor, 1GB DDR2 memory, 250GB SATA2 Hd and cheap case.
I'll still using my 6600GT AGP and PSU TT430W in my new rig.

Then i will give my old rig to my bro along with my old GeForce 4 MX 460.


My Questions, please take a look:

1. Please give me combination brand and type of mobo (AM2/Core 2 Duo) and processor
(AM2 3800 X2 / E6300) so i can compare them in price and performance. Sure it will
support SATA2 + overclocking ability please.
is there AM2 mobo with AGP slot? or i should replace AM2 with Asrock DualSata939 ?
both AGP and PCIex in one mobo is good for me.

2. whats brand and speed of memory i should buy for abit OC'ing? is Kingston/Corsair value
ok? What Speed? 533/667 for a low rig like in Number 1?

3. Whats good+cool brand of 250GB SATA2 HD (seagate/WD) ?

4. Can i use my old PSU in this new rig?

5. if i decide to change the video to PCIex to 7600GS, is it good enough from 6600GT AGP?
if budget for video 150 us$, is it worthwhile to replace video now?

thank you in advance
dp

 

[SidVicious]

If you go for an Asrock 775Dual-VSTA and an E6300, you'll be able to migrate your PC-2700 (up to two sticks) and your 6600GT yet have the option to upgrade to DDR2 and a PCIe video card later on...

The 939Dual-SATA2 is a little less tempting, you'll have to get an AM2 riser (sold separately) along with and AM2 CPU and DDR2 to go with it in order to get an upgrade path.

Needless to say, the vast majority of benchmarks are in favor of C2D, making the 775Dual-VSTA and E6300 the better deal.

 

[1Tanker]

If you go for an Asrock 775Dual-VSTA and an E6300, you'll be able to migrate your PC-2700 (up to two sticks) and your 6600GT yet have the option to upgrade to DDR2 and a PCIe video card later on...

The 939Dual-SATA2 is a little less tempting, you'll have to get an AM2 riser (sold separately) along with and AM2 CPU and DDR2 to go with it in order to get an upgrade path.

Needless to say, the vast majority of benchmarks are in favor of C2D, making the 775Dual-VSTA and E6300 the better deal.

The problem with this is that your old DDR is 2700, which will hinder performance on C2D and s939. Seeing that it's valueRAM, i doubt it will run at PC3200 speeds. Also, i get the feeling that you have 3x256MB sticks of RAM, and the 775Dual-VSTA only has room for 2 DIMMS, thus you will only be able to use 512MB of RAM. :?

 

[SidVicious]

If you go for an Asrock 775Dual-VSTA and an E6300, you'll be able to migrate your PC-2700 (up to two sticks) and your 6600GT yet have the option to upgrade to DDR2 and a PCIe video card later on...

The 939Dual-SATA2 is a little less tempting, you'll have to get an AM2 riser (sold separately) along with and AM2 CPU and DDR2 to go with it in order to get an upgrade path.

Needless to say, the vast majority of benchmarks are in favor of C2D, making the 775Dual-VSTA and E6300 the better deal.

The problem with this is that your old DDR is 2700, which will hinder performance on C2D and s939. Seeing that it's valueRAM, i doubt it will run at PC3200 speeds. Also, i get the feeling that you have 3x256MB sticks of RAM, and the 775Dual-VSTA only has room for 2 DIMMS, thus you will only be able to use 512MB of RAM. :?

Here is a bunch of interesting AnandTech articles about the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA, the First One deal with DDR vs DDR2 memory (the difference between PC-2700, PC-3200, PC2-4200 & PC2-5400 is insignificant), the Second One compare a variety of C2D ready motherboards (no surprise here, the difference once again is insignificant) and the Third One deal with AGP vs PCIe (guess what, no difference). So much for PC-2700 being inadequate, it'll do just fine for a low budget upgrade until he can get enough funds to go out and buy a pair of 1GB PC2-5400 modules...

 

[1Tanker]

If you go for an Asrock 775Dual-VSTA and an E6300, you'll be able to migrate your PC-2700 (up to two sticks) and your 6600GT yet have the option to upgrade to DDR2 and a PCIe video card later on...

The 939Dual-SATA2 is a little less tempting, you'll have to get an AM2 riser (sold separately) along with and AM2 CPU and DDR2 to go with it in order to get an upgrade path.

Needless to say, the vast majority of benchmarks are in favor of C2D, making the 775Dual-VSTA and E6300 the better deal.

The problem with this is that your old DDR is 2700, which will hinder performance on C2D and s939. Seeing that it's valueRAM, i doubt it will run at PC3200 speeds. Also, i get the feeling that you have 3x256MB sticks of RAM, and the 775Dual-VSTA only has room for 2 DIMMS, thus you will only be able to use 512MB of RAM. :?

Here is a bunch of interesting AnandTech articles about the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA, the First One deal with DDR vs DDR2 memory (the difference between PC-2700, PC-3200, PC2-4200 & PC2-5400 is insignificant), the Second One compare a variety of C2D ready motherboards (no surprise here, the difference once again is insignificant) and the Third One deal with AGP vs PCIe (guess what, no difference). So much for PC-2700 being inadequate, it'll do just fine for a low budget upgrade until he can get enough funds to go out and buy a pair of 1GB PC2-5400 modules...There is a penalty with PC2700. PC3200 keeps up fine.

Overall, gaming performance is fine with low latency DDR-400 memory on this platform. Even DDR-333 provides for acceptable performance, particularly if you're looking to upgrade from an old socket A or 478 system.

Also, if you look at the PC2700 they used, the timings used were 2-2-2-7. OP's PC2700 is value RAM, and as such, will not likely run anywhere near those low timings.

Not trying to argue Sid , i think that the 775Dual-VSTA is a great transitional mobo, but with PC3200 and decent timings. The more bottlenecks you add into the system, the more they will accumulate and eventually degrade performance. That's not taking into account the possibility that the OP might only be able to use 512MB. Just some things for the OP to also keep in mind.

 

[SidVicious]

Not trying to argue either, anything better than value PC-2700 would quite obviously be, hmmm, better ?

Even if it is bottlenecked by only 512MB of PC-2700 (which he most likely OC'ed to 200MHz unless he has an AXP-M or multiplier unlocked AXP), an E6300 will still be leaps and bounds ahead of his old 'rig, up to him to transition straight to DDR2 as he upgrades or wait a bit and enjoy an extra boost from adopting DDR2 later on...

 

[1Tanker]

Not trying to argue either, anything better than value PC-2700 would quite obviously be, hmmm, better ?

Even if it is bottlenecked by only 512MB of PC-2700 (which he most likely OC'ed to 200MHz unless he has an AXP-M or multiplier unlocked AXP), an E6300 will still be leaps and bounds ahead of his old 'rig, up to him to transition straight to DDR2 as he upgrades or wait a bit and enjoy an extra boost from adopting DDR2 later on...

Agreed.

 

[13thmonkey]

2. whats brand and speed of memory i should buy for abit OC'ing? is Kingston/Corsair value
ok? What Speed? 533/667 for a low rig like in Number 1?

Given the limited OC ability of that Board RAM may not be so much of a consideration, I don't think that it can fully utilise DRR2-6400 for instance.

But you may want to get a single stick of DDR2 6400, with the intention of getting a second stick later on, as 2Gb is by far the sweet spot for ram. It also means that you won't have to alter volts on ram if you do manage to start getting a decent OC on it. I've heard of people happily hitting 300 fsb on this mobo. The gentleman who had issues with a 7600GT and C2D was using this board and OC'd well with his AGP card, PCI-E was a different story unfortunately.

As for Brand, get whatever you can, there are a dozen other posts out there of what RAm shoud I get with C2D. All of them have very valid answers.

 

[gOJDO]

C2D is much better choice

 

[pyrix]

Definitly go C2D over am2, keep your 6600GT, upgrade later, perhaps when DX10 comes out. I have a 7600GS PCI-E, a friend of mine has a 6600GT PCI-E, is rarely any differnece. His is PCI-E, and he has an AM2 processor and 2gb of ram. But wont make that much difference. Spend your money on more and better ram.

 

[gOJDO]

Definitly go C2D over am2, keep your 6600GT, upgrade later, perhaps when DX10 comes out. I have a 7600GS PCI-E, a friend of mine has a 6600GT PCI-E, is rarely any differnece. His is PCI-E, and he has an AM2 processor and 2gb of ram. But wont make that much difference. Spend your money on more and better ram.

The 7600GS is better than 6600GT, especialy the models with 512MB frame buffer. Also the 7600GS is more overclockable in % than 6600GT and it gives better image quality.

 

[pyrix]

That greatly depends. Models with 512mb of frame buffer are rare, and the GS reference design is for a passively cooled heatsink. I dont know about you, but im not game to overclock any when the core temps reach about 70 degrees celsius playing BF2, and the heatsink gets too hot too touch, and is uncomfortable to touch even at boot.

In his particular case, I thnk he is better off getting more ram than a video upgrade he doesnt really need. Image quility is debatable, it really depends on your drivers and monitor. Certainly I have never noticed any difference between my rig and my aforementioned friends, both are using budget analog LCD panels.

 

[gOJDO]

I was talking about the image quality delivered by the hardware of GF 7xxx, which is better than GF 6xxx. Also, no matter that its cooler comes without fan it still runs quite cool. If you want to use its OC headroom, you'll need any cheap fan. I've benchmarked and compared both 6600GT 256MB vs 7600GS 256MB. The 7600GS is about 10-20% faster for games that does not require more than 256MB for textures.

 

[pyrix]

I know the 7600GS is a better card than the 6600GT, this is why I brought one. However, in his case, he is going to getter a better performance increase from more and faster ram than he would upgrading to a GT. If he has the cash, then do both, but if not, go the RAM over the gfx card. THAT was my point

 

[sevendp]

thanks for replying....

just want to make sure.... i wont use my old KVR 768MB DDR memory.
i will give it to my bro along with my Barton + old mobo.

it was 2 x 256MB and 2 x 128 MB
before im using 2 x 128 MB then because my mobo got 4 slot DDR, i
add another 2 x 256MB.

i can OC my Barton to 2,2GHz, but i cant OC this KVR. so cpu:memory is
200:166 MHz (divider 83%).

my Barton is old model, i think multiplier unlocked AXP. but i have never try it.
i ever tried set CPU FSB to 207MHz, memory divider to 80% -> 166MHz. my system doesnt
boot at all. am i doing something wrong here?

my 6600GT was hot before i change the stock cooler to Zalman + AS5.
it can decrease 10 celcius in idle and almost 30-35c in full load.

sorry ...i have a lot Questions:
1. with same $ bucks, which one give better ratio of performance+price between
OCed Asrock 775Dual-VSTA + E6300 and OCed X2 3800 (AM2/939) with same price of mobo+Proc? some
TForce board series is good enough for OC right?
i know E6300 + good mobo + good memory is very good for OC, but not with low budget mobo +
value memory. i just want to compare them with limited budget like me

2. if i upgrade to 1 GB, better buy 1x1GB or 2x512MB ? i think when the mobo only support
2 slot, then better i get 1x1GB right? but is this Asrock 775Dual-VSTA support dual-channel
DDR2? if so then how about performance with or without dual-channel enabled? what i know is
dual channel doubled the bandwith..... and is PC5400 enough for this rig?
i hear Asrock have value mobo that support only AGP, is that have better performance than 775Dual-VSTA (excluding PCIe support)?

3. E6300 + this Asrock Mobo + 1GB DDR2 (PC5400?) will leaps and bounds ahead of my old 'rig by how many percentage in overall performance approximately?

4. is video card affect in OC?

thx

note: if i have enough budget, i will buy E6300 + Gigabyte DS3 + adequate 1 GB DDR2 + 7600GT
too bad im still loving my 6600GT AGP