Upgrade advice

[bobkn]

The LGA775 series is obsolete. I would recommend a Phenom x4 with an 890X motherboard for a decent brand new system.

No doubt that'd be a cost-effective upgrade, but it looks more like a $300+ upgrade to me. (DDR3 would be required with an 890X MB, no?)

What's the main use of the system? Doesn't look like a gaming system, but I might be wrong. (I have what should be a pretty good gaming system, but I don't do much gaming.)

I'd suggest waiting until you can come up with more than $200, and doing an upgrade that is less of a stopgap.

(Damn. This thread really took off while I was looking around. Looks like it's turned into a real Intel vs AMD fan festival.)

 

[NTFS]

The difference is I've had mine for about 5 years already with out having to upgrade

And? The time will come eventually.

 

[NTFS]

The LGA775 series is obsolete. I would recommend a Phenom x4 with an 890X motherboard for a decent brand new system.

No doubt that'd be a cost-effective upgrade, but it looks more like a $300+ upgrade to me. (DDR3 would be required with an 890X MB, no?)

What's the main use of the system? Doesn't look like a gaming system, but I might be wrong. (I have what should be a pretty good gaming system, but I don't do much gaming.)

I'd suggest waiting until you can come up with more than $200, and doing an upgrade that is less of a stopgap.

$300 that is the newest you can get from AMD - that will last.

 

[Darician]

JChase, you have a Core 2 Quad, that's cool. If I had that right now, I wouldn't even be looking to upgrade for a long while.

But getting back to my economical upgrade, I'm essentially looking for a relatively cheap performance boost, mainly to boost the speed of my video encoding. Now, I don't do any high end editing with Adobe Premier, just some simple stuff with Sony Vegas and for the most part, like to run VMs every so often for testing and a lot of media (audio and video) watching. I do some light gaming but mostly with games that are usually pre-2007 so I'm not too concerned about the latest features currently.

And yeah, I want to avoid spending the money on DDR3 right now hence why I want to stick with LGA 775 and not go with LGA 1156 or 1366 right now. But I might have to take AMD into consideration. I've been an Intel person since I've started using computers and never had an AMD PC but having more cores may be a deciding factor. I'll take a look at combo deals and see what works under a budget.

 

[NTFS]

CPU: AMD Athlon x4 635

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...m_re=amd_athlon_x4_635-_-19-103-882-_-Product

RAM: Kingston Value Ram 4GB DDR3

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ingston_Value_Ram_DDR3-_-20-134-810-_-Product

MOBO: 880G ATX

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...44&cm_re=Gigabyte_880G-_-13-128-444-_-Product

That will do for a long while.

$300 total.

 

[Night Hawk]

Yes, the video card slot version, on the -16 slot doesn't matter, the 2.0 is backward compatible, just won't be at it's max possible speeds, talking around 10% difference at most.

Yeah, it would be nice but the 930 I am sure is huge upgrade for me, although my system as is runs great, my wife will be more than pleased, though the 5850 stays with me.

The 2.0 cards will work on 1.0, 1.1 slots not the other way around with old cards on the newer 2.0 boards. Thats where the problem is for old cards.

lol @ LGA 775 is obsolete. My quad core will be ahead of its time for another 5 years, It still over clocks to 3.6 ghz .

3.6GHz? My 965 runs 3.4GHz @ stock and can push 4GHz+, that LGA775 isn't even a native quad, its dual stuck together, old architecture.

The early reviews on the 965 claimed 6.3ghz oced in one article some time back. I simply went with the faster default clock speed rather then trying to push things out of a lesser model.

Being a 125W means it will run warmer however over the other 90w and certainly 65w models. When the need to swap memory out came for 1.5v dimms over the 1.9v the hsf also had to be replaced due to the heat shields sticking up above the dimms pushing up on that. The new hsf lost some -5C of cooling in the process.

The difference is I've had mine for about 5 years already with out having to upgrade

5yr.s years is certainly a good stretch like the 6 1/2yr. old Socket A build I have onhand here now simply for testing things that will run the 32bit 7 with XP drivers! onboard sound, old AGP video card, chipset, old Audigy 2 sound card even all XP drivers. But it's an old spare!

New board = USB 3.0 and Sata III ports when correct model selected. That's the latest models seeing about $140 a board if not higher with only a few mainly Microatx fetching less.

 

[Faladu]

Nah, I'd go for the Phenom II X4 945 instead of that for $39 more if looking to really go for it for a little bit more.

NTFS just started all the nitpicking, hehe

That Raga 445 X3 has a chance of unlocking the 4th core also, most things aren't taking avantage of extra cores much, so it's often a non-factor.

Our spare 3rd PC is a AMD Athlon (not 64 unfortunately) 3000+, 2 gigs of DDR400, 5900XT video card (AGP 8x slot), with I think I have a SB-512 sound card in it, though might be on-board now for Win7 not liking that old dinosaur (it's all relative) hardware, it runs 32-bit 7 HP adequately for basic surfing and minor gaming needs.

 

[jchase520]

The difference is I've had mine for about 5 years already with out having to upgrade

And? The time will come eventually.

by the time I NEED to upgrade I would have gotten 10 times the value of if I spent money on a phenom

 

[NTFS]

$39 for L3 cache isn't required, unless you are gaming.

 

[Darician]

I don't know where you're getting that PCIe 2.0 Slots won't support PCIe 1.0 and 1.1 cards. Almost all sources I've read indicate the opposite.

 

[NTFS]

I don't know where you're getting that PCIe 2.0 Slots won't support PCIe 1.0 and 1.1 cards. Almost all sources I've read indicate the opposite.

May not, it tends to vary - have you looked at the parts I suggested?

 

[Darician]

I looked at the parts and they look good but I don't want to spend the extra money on DDR3 RAM. That makes it too expensive for me currently.

 

[Night Hawk]

The same would be applied to running AGP 4x cards on 8x slots the newer cards are backward compatible while the older is not forward in that sense and typically would not be recommended. The 2xxxx Radeons will likely be dropped soon enough anyways where the the cpu and memory will simply be packed away in the event another case found needs refurbishing.

Besides I can move stuff out of another less favorable case from another old build still in top shape and take asvantage of the better cooling! Just some basic recycling at work!

 

[Darician]

True I guess. I have a couple 7950 GTs that I want to reuse but to their power requirements, it ain't easy. And also, if I had the money to spend on DDR3, I'd just upgrade to a Core i3 or i5 and be done with it.

 

[win7clutz]

I didn't see where the OP said anything 'bout AMD, video encoding, or building a new box.

Darician: The upgrade path you originally posted will serve you well for some time and for what you're investing. Ignore the nonsense 'bout "Out-dated" technology..

 

[NTFS]

I looked at the parts and they look good but I don't want to spend the extra money on DDR3 RAM. That makes it too expensive for me currently.

Get this motherboard; its the one I have:

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

just note that it doesn't much room for expansion in terms of tv tuners etc. Supports DDR2 800 (which I'm using in this build).

 

[Faladu]

Dar, I was afraid you would say that, what's your max $ budgeted for this project please, give us the painful MAX of truth after you shattered the piggy bank and counted up the coinage...

First of all is that ASUS mobo of yours still working? (I know sounds like a dumb question, but I have to start somewhere)

..and is it R2.0?

Shows up with specs on newegg here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131048

And could use the Core 2 Duo CPUs so no new mobo needed?

If that's the case, then you could put that extra money into a E8400, same one I use, $169.50 or go lower E7500 is $117.

 

[Darician]

The maximum budget I'm putting to this and this is an absolute maximum: $200 (and that's including shipping, tax, etc.) My current ASUS motherboard is working though. My current Pentium D PC, just to note, is fully operational and has no technical issues to speak of. It's just slow due to the CPU being its bottleneck.

Additionally, I also want to start testing 64-bit VMs for Server 2008 R2 evaluation and training and my Pentium D doesn't support Hardware Virtuatization that is required to run 64-bit VMs so I'm out of luck currently. The Pentium Dual-Core E6600 that I picked out supports Intel VT to have that covered. As far as AMD goes, I know pretty much all of them (except maybe the Semprons) support AMD-V for Hardware Virtualization so that would be covered. And NTFS, regarding that motherboard, it's nice but what threw me was it being MicroATX. I sincerely prefer regular sized ATX boards.

Kind of coincidentally though, you sound like most of my colleagues who want me to convert to AMD. Again, the cores and price may sway me but on the other hand, I've tried Athlon II X2 and X3 and their performance in many aspects is really reminiscent of my Pentium D. Don't get me wrong, I understand they smoke the Pentium D to death but in many instances, it doesn't feel that much faster whereas the Pentium Dual-Core E6500 that I've tested really smokes the Pentium D very badly. I've thought also about Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad but the price is still a bit high. If I can stretch it, I might even go for a Core 2 Duo E7500. I'll still take a look at AMD but I'm not too keen on it as I am on Intel.

 

[Faladu]

Where do you stand on that current ASUS motherboard, it can apparently run the Core II Duo CPUs.

Which if just replacing the CPU, I'd go E8400 and be done with it.

 

[NTFS]

MOBO:

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

With DDR2

CPU:

AMD Athlon x4 635

Newegg.com - AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX635WFGMBOX

Under $200.