Advice on system upgrade

[Warlord88]

Hi guys,

I am now planning to upgrade my current system (a very old one at that) and am hoping that you can help me out here.

Currently, I have this system:
* AMD Athlon 64 3000+
* Asus K8V-X Motherboard
* 2 GB DDR RAM
* ATI Radeon x1950 Pro AGP 512 MB

Now, obviously, the CPU is severely bottlenecking the system. (I had been warned by guys on forum that it would happen but I got the card as gift, so I lived with it). I want to purchase new CPU, RAM and Motherboard so that there would be no severe bottlenecks.

AMD processors appear to be cheaper than comparable Intel ones. So I am planning on AMD Phenom processor and compatible AM2+ motherboard. Phenom II with AM3 board is also an option but that would probably overshoot my budget and I don't want any severe bottlenecks. More importantly I need a motherboard that has an AGP 8x slot to fit in the current x1950 Pro as well as a PCI-E slot for any future GPU upgrade.

P.S. I found some of ASRock motherboards which fit my requirement but they don't appear to be available here in India. Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and ABit seem to be available choices.

 

[mamw93]

You'll end up having to replace the vid card too because no current motherboard will support AGP. They will all be PCI Express 2.0. Get a LGA775 mobo and an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 cause a Core 2 Duo would be a stupid buy. For RAM get either 2GB DDR2 Dual Channel or 4GB.

 

[Warlord88]

Actually I found a few ASRock boards which contain both AGP and PCI-E slots. One of them is at http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=ALiveDual-eSATA2.

I am certainly going for a Quad Core. Also, I found that Phenom II does not necessarily require DDR3 memory which is very costly at the moment.

I am having hard time deciding whether it'll be Phenom II or similarly priced Intel Quad Core. There are rumors that Intel is going to slash prices of quad processors so that Q9550 will be similarly priced to Phenom X4 940, in which case Intel would be the clear winner.

But the deciding factor is availability of AGP slot on compatible motherboard. I really don't want to throw away that x1950 Pro.