Researching My Trade Up Options.

[Gary R.]

Well, I am thinking about the next year or so and what's going to be hitting the computing public and I realize that between Vista and FSX my current system will be obsolete in another year.  Therefor I am asking your help to determine my best and most economical trade up options.  Remember, I haven't bought a 100% new system since 2000.  The shop I deal with gives me trade up credit on upgrades and chances are that I'll have this same plane grey antec tower years to come.  What I'm looking for is prices.  Here's what I want.

64 AMD capable mobo using PC3200 RAM and both AGP and PCI-E buses.
Athlon 64 bit 3400

It is very important to my upgrade scheme to find a 64 bit compatible mobo that uses PC-3200 ram and has both PCI-E and AGP buses.  If anyone can recommend a brand to me I'd appreciate it.  Thanks.

[Gunny04]

an AMD Athlon 3700 San diego core 64 bit Processer and PCI-E mobo combos on ebay for between 150 and 300 or so USD probably want a power supply as well, if you look on ebay for brand new Buy now you can find some deals, or check Newegg, I have to Get a processer and mobo soon myself, check my specs

[Gary R.]

Thanks for the tip Gunny.  Well, if I have a specific idea of what I want, the shop I deal with will get it.  You see, I trade my stuff up, the shop gives me credit on my old stuff which saves me money and storage space.  They do rebuilds with quality old stuff and I try to peice things together in a way that I never have to get a lot of new stuff at once.  That's why I was looking for a board that can use PC-3200 ram.  That's what I currently have and if I can use it on the new board, it saves me money.  My card also is AGP but if I can find a board that has both AGP and PCI-E I  don't have to worry about upgrading my vid card right away, I can use the one I have already.  Although, the PCI-E version of the 6600 actually costs less than the AGP version and for not much more I could have the PCI-E 6800 so maybe looking for a dual bussed board isn't that important.  I basically want to trade up my core 32 bit hardware to 64 bit hardware for as little as possible, say no more than $200 USD after the trade in value of my old stuff is calculated.  Now, power supplies are something I never think about much.  I currently have a 400 watt. I hope that will be enough.  Do 64 bit systems have different power requirements than 32 bit? Thanks.

[Gunny04]

I dont think there is any power differences between 64 and 32 but the more the better, as in trade ups a good system yes but I Have a lot of stuff I'm gonna ebay pretty soon, and I bet you can get more Cash on ebay then any trade up or credit. A good system I guess if your on a lower budget, I'd have no use for it because I get all my components myself to ensure I get what I want, Cheers, and happy upgrading  ;D Gunny

[GunnerMan]

The 64 bit procs use less power than Athlon XPs, thats why the run cooler. Less power is always on a CPU engineeres mind. In a home a single computer may not seem like much. In a corporate environment qwhere you have 100s-1000s of computers running that power bill adds up. So many times they shop for lower power use.

Don't get a new system now unless you will have some money in a few months because Socket m2 is coming and it will have a vast improvement over Socket 939 systems.

[congo]

Hybrid systems embracing 2 different technologies are never as good as a pure mainboard dedicated to say, PCIe only.

[Fozzer]

As far as I know, you can't have both AGP and PCI-E sockets on the same motherboard...?

also...if you get a PCI-E motherboard all your existing AGP and PCI cards will no longer fit/work...!

My BFG 6600 GT O/C AGP card, and my PCI modem, PCI sound card, PCI video card, and PCI LAN card, etc will no longer fit in the new PCI-E sockets...!

Note also that many PCI-E motherbords are a bit short in the PCI-E slot department...!!!

(My present Gigabyte MoBo has 1 AGP slot and 5 PCI slots).

Probably, getting the latest MoBo with the latest processor socket and PCI-E slots will mean scrapping  all of your existing hardware....
..it would, in my case... ...!
and starting from scratch...
...costing loads of extra money...!!!

Almost everything in the spec listed in my signature would be completely obsolete...!!

Paul... ...!

[ctjoyce]

Foz take a look at my board. I have both slots on it, and both work. Also any of the ATi Express 200 chipsets have AGP and PCI-e. Also all of your regular PCi devices will work as all boards have PCI slots on them. Alawaies have alawaies will. The difference your thinking of is PCI-E x1 slots. These are absoltely useless as nothing was made for them and I have no idea why they even put them on boards anymore. However personally I would go for PCI-e only, and wate for socket AM2 to come out.

Cheers
Cameron

[Rifleman]

I tried to search the gigabyte site for your indicted m-board..........not found.....you sure you have enumerated it correctly on your sig image ?

  8I95P Duo-A  ? ? ?

Maybe something like  81955 ?......second character being a number "1"........and not a letter "I" as you show on your image ?

....or maybe this one   ...    GA-8I945P Dual Graphic (Intel 945P Chipset)

.........."Dual" , and not "DUO-A"

I was very interested when you mentioned that you have both PCI-e and AGP, so I am trying to find info on this particular type of board.......no luck as yet with the direction I got from the m-board name on your sig image of your Sheila.........