Hardware upgrades need advice

[Cloe]

I'm looking for some advice as I've gotten way way out of the loopand looked into somethings today. Maybe add one more "way" in there.

Looking at the system reqs for Oblivion I thought it woudn't be much of a stretch to up grade a couple of hard parts. Ugh! Bump the cpu or video card. Simple stuff like that lol

Well hells bells heres what I discovered. Socket 754 is out. AGP is drifting that way because ofPCI Express ~@@~

Basic hardware I have is:
CPU AMD (64)Barton 3000+ 2GHz
MB FIC K8-800T K8T800 http://www.fic.com.tw/product/mother...D/K8-800T.aspx
Video card is an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb 8X (AGP)
RAM 1gig DDR 400

With the sockets being 939 now and AGP at 8X giving way to PCI Express 16X
I started looking at the different options. *staggers, bumps head into wall and falls down*

I'm not unhappy with my current computer, what I'm trying to plan toward is an up grade path to the newer standards and enhancing what I have if possible in the mean time with as little cost on the current system. I don't mind buying a component here and there over a few months and putting it together once I have everything.

I'm wondering about trying to get a hold of a clawhammer 3400 or two SATAs however with SATA II, If I did get 2 SATA drives at least SATA II is backwards compatible and I'd still be able to use them. Then theres adding a gig of RAM which will go forward but at DDR 400.

It started to make sense for a minute but info overload between toms hardware and sharkys extreme with a dash of browsing at newegg and pricewatch started to make my head spin. I haven't been to TCW or Tiger yet, a little overwhelmed atm...

So if you would be so kind as to give me some advice on what would enhance the current system the best and thoughts on the upgrade path, I would greatly appreciate it. I understand that people have solid beliefs in their knowledge and I only ask that should anyone respond to this that they appreciate others preferences and not argue ford or chevy so to speak.

Thanks in advance!

PS.. Almost forgot, please provide links if possible.

[Fratricide]

My personal thoughts and opinions are as follows... I would personally, and am myself, hold off on getting any new Mobo until the M2 socket for AMD rolls out (supposed to be 2nd quarter 2006). The M2 is a 940 pin socket not too dissimilar to the 939 pin socket used currently, but for one big difference. The M2 is supposed to be able to utilize DDR2 memory. I cant seem to remember what site I was at that was giving all this info away like it was yesterdays news, but Ill see if I cant find it today sometime.

As for HDD... I would definately go with SATA2 capable drives, as those are something that you can aquire now and use them via backwards compatability with SATA1. There are some really nice SATA2 drives available right now for really pretty cheap... I recently picked up 2x250 GB HDD for about $100 each delivered.

Video... The wave of the future is PCIx16, and more potentially SLI. The biggest problem I see right now with SLI is that there is very little software written to take full advantage of the Dual card capabilities. The other problem is that with only 1 on board video controller when you add the SLI you have to split the 16x pipeline between both cards... At least 1 Mobo manufacturer has compensated for this by adding a second video controller on the Mobo to make both cards run at 16x. (I dont advertize for card manufacturers, but it is Gigabyte that I have seen thus far with this addition) I won't go into which video card is better then the others( ATI vs NVidia ), that is to me personal preference, I use both currently.

Sound, that is mostly personal preference IMHO. If you dont have the room setup to take advantage of a 7.1 THX quality capable sound card, there is really no point in purchasing such a thing.

The biggest advice I can give to anyone is you need to make sure you do the research on the components that you are getting, or looking at getting. If you have your eyes set on a certain motherboard, make sure you read the specs from the manufacturer, read the forums about the board on the manufacturers website ( hopefully they have one, as most to these days ). read the comments on Newegg or TigerDirect about others experiences with the product, their problems, Pros, Cons... etc about what you are looking at purchasing. Ensure that you buy components that are compatable with the other components.

I had a friend once that saw me put together a PC, actually one I still am using to game on, and he said, "Man... if you put that together it cant be that hard." He then proceeded to purchase components from the internet. A week later he brought all the stuff that came in the mail and he couldn't get some of the stuff to work. He had purchased an AMD board, but he purchased an Intel Processor. The board he purchased took 184pin DDR memory but he purchased 168 pin SRAM. He bought SATA hard drives, but he had no SATA ports on his Mother board. Basically he didnt pay attention to anything he was doing.

Long story short, after an hour or so going through the pile of stuff he bought he returned the memory, processor, and Mobo and ordered ones that would be compatable with each other. After waiting for over 1 month to get all the stuff in and installed in the PC, He finally had a system that worked. Had he spent a mere 45 mins extra the first time he ordered his stuff, he would have had a working PC in a week.

Anyway... enough rambling on my part... I hope my comments help you on your journey towards a new, or at least upgraded, PC.

[Kulamata]

The only upgrades I ever make are to add memory and to change the video card. After that, it seems to make more sense to replace all, although the hard drives might be transferable. I use JNCS, who sell motherboard bundles, consisting of Mobo, processor, and memory, assembled and burned in and warranted. Or the whole system if you're so inclined; in either case built to order, without any extraneous software; disks included with your order.

I'd suggest being aware of Microsoft Vista (ex Longhorn) as it will, as usual, demand a more capable system than its predecessor. Anything you buy should be Vista capable, and then some, to try for a delayed obsolescence.

[Cloe]

In the 10 days or sofrom post to first reply, which I do appreciate.
Here is what happened.

I decided to try using the sata II HDDs and found that if jumpered correctly they will runat the sata I standard of150mb/s For the WDC that is jumper 5:6

Found out while attempting to do this that the via chipset for the sata I controller was flakey and wouldn't reliably intialize the drives. Replacement plan time, I was glad I did that since they gave me the full value of parts at the time of purchase.

Ended up with an Socket 939 A8N-SLI DeluxeMotherBoard and an AMD 64bit 3700+ proc. Toms Hardware had a great head to head 18 day stress test that involved thismotherboard. So I know I will be able to grow with it some.
The native sound is better than the Audiogy I had which freed up a pci slot and helps with air flow in the case. Also still trying to determine if I can disable some of the PCI slots in the bios to free up some resources. More of a museing since it almost posts too fast as it is.

I also went with the round cables vs the ribbons for the controlers to help with air flow. The MainBoard stays around 28c and the cpu at 2.2ghz stays around 34c and gets up to 41c playing HZ. Well below the 70c AMD lists as a high temp. So after a decent burn in time I'll play with overclocking some. Don't really see the need to overclock atm. The little blue line only goes back and forth 1 1/2 times when starting up windows.. *Cackle* Best I've ever been able to reduce that to was 7 with the old set up.

PCI Express crossfire is interesting and am still learning about it, but based on what one of ya had to say with the 16x split I'm glad I only went with one lower end pciE card. ATI Radeon X1300 256mb Internal DAC 400mhz. Even being lower end it so far is working nicely. I've used the GeForce cards too and don't really have a prefference other than "Price" at the time I'm buyinga video card.Might get a second one depending on what else I can learn. Besides I don't want toinvest in a graphics card/s untill I better understand things.

Currently the DDR2 RAM is a standard being used for the Intel boards. Haven't seen anything regarding it for the AMD compatible ones "yet".

Added some RAM and now have 3gigs DDR 3200 400mhz 2 1gig sticks and 2 512meg sticks.. Kinda sucks because they run at a total of 128bit 333mhz
If I replaced the 512's with 1gig sticks it would be at 400mhz. Or if I took out the 2 512s I'd be running 2gigs at 400mhz.. Something to do with that (A1-B1) (A2-B2) dual channel set up on the motherboard. So 333mhz is the max till I reduce or expand the RAM. Still undecided on this point tho...

I still have some studying to do on the whole crossfire standard with video.

I'm off to do some more tweaking and reading up on the newer standards. All in all it's been pretty fun getting the dust out of the case lol.

Oh ya I did have to upgrade the power supply. The first one from BFG was bad out of the box and Iwasted about 4hrs rechecking everything. Ended up with a thermaltake 525watt pspu. I really like this particular power supply with the modular approach to the plugs. Now I don't have 6+ unused plugs hanging around in the case while having the capacity to plug in more strings if needed. Which I just might if I use the other 6 sata ports.


If anyone comes up with links to checkoutand learn more please share them.

[Wu Li Master]

Probably the best way to squeeze a little more life out of your system is getting a new video card. I suggest the ATI all-in-wonder X800 XT. Its about 3x faster than the card you have now and will come with some cool multimedia stuff. (play Horizions on your TV) Just some quick numbers...

9800 Pro X800
3.05 Gpixels/sec 8 Gpixels/sec
380 Mtriangles 750 Mtriangles.
128Mb Memory 256 Mb

so its about 3x faster than the one you have now. (I have the 9800 all-in-wonder pro 128... for now) and it is one of the few cards that is still 8x AGP. Also this card is HD.