Asus A8N-E and CPU/GFX Upgrade

[ShinzoUK]

Hi Guys,

My apols if this has already been answered, but I have searched the forums but can't find the answer.

I have the Asus A8N-E and would like to do a little cheap upgrade, however, the Asus tech support is kak (IMO), as they appear to be unobtainable and the Asus forums haven't really helped.

I would like to keep the mobo (which I believe is Revision 2 and has bios 1008) and just upgrade the CPU and GFX card. I was initially thinking I'd like to pop the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ into this mobo, but nobody could confirm if it would take that chip, however, it appears that it will at least take the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (which would be better than my current 2 year old 3700+ San Diego).

I'd also like to pop in either one of the latest NVidia 8800/9800 or Radeon 4850 GFX cards, but as they are PCI-E 2.0, I am not sure if they will work on this mobo.

If anyone knows whether I can successfully put these bits onto the Asus A8N-E, I'd be most grateful for some confirmation.

As my OS is currently XP SP2, assuming any of the above is possible, I'd also be most grateful if anyone could let me know if I would also need to do bios and/or driver updates/upgrades to get them to work properly.

My apols for all the questions.

Thanks very much in advance.

S.

 

[Bad_Daddy]

I just upgraded from an A8N Premium 939 board.

The fastest CPU you can use is an OPTERON 185...which, in my understanding, performs a little better than the X2 4800+, but when I looked last year they were hard to find and expensive.

I had a NVIDIA 8800GS in this board and it worked fine. But I think my board had a PCI-E 2.0 slot. Im not sure if your E board does or not.

The 939 board is a dead end....probably wiser to save money for a new MB/CPU/memory upgrade.

 

[BadKharmaCDN]

I have an older machine which has an A8N-E board , an Athlon X2 4800+ cpu and has run with and 8800GTS OC2 320 but is currently using an EN 7900GT TOP. This machine still runs well and has not ever let me down. You should not have any problems with what you posted as an attempt.

 

[geofelt]

Any 2.0 vga cards will run just fine in your 1.0 pcie slot. 2.0 and 1.0 are both forward and backward compatible. The performance will be virtually the same. Only with the strongest of vga cards and a powerful cpu to drive it will you see as much as a 1-2% difference in performance.

 

[ShinzoUK]

Thanks for the encouraging info and all of your opinions guys.

I had read shortly after posting my original question that the Athlon 64 X2 4800+, would not work in a 939 board as the chip was AM2, but another site selling the chip said that it would. Am I missing something (is there a 939 and an AM2 version of the 4800+?) or are those people saying that it won't work just misguided?

Thanks again.

S.