Upgrade Tme - Am2 Board - Which one?

[EvilMunky]

I havent done much Hardware stuff lately but its about time for me to upgrade my socket 939 3700+.

I am looking for an AM2 based solution based around the AMD AM2 Athlon 64 5200+ Windsor Core, Dual Core 2.6GHz, 2x 1mb Cache, chip. Problem is, I dont know what motherboard I need to be looking at anymore. I am clueless about current chipsets etc.

The items I will need are :

CPU (AMD AM2 Athlon 64 5200+ Windsor Core, Dual Core 2.6GHz, 2x 1mb Cache)
Motherboard : Must take up to 8gb RAM. SLI not necessary
RAM: 4gb - DDR2
Graphics Card: Must be Nvidia

The rest I have.

The machine will be for gaming mainly, as well as for a bit of work here and there.
Therefore a decent graphics card will be required. Sound - Im happy to go with decent surround on board.

So, any suggestions guys?

Spend limit around 400 quid - ish!

Cheers

[staffsMike]

AMD 590i is the best chipset from memory..rusty on AMD though
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=443956

i thought the brisbane core was better (same speed)
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/produ...oductID=679843

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MY-072-OC
two sets of that is insanely cheap and you can RMA direct to OCZ.

Which leaves around £130 for graphics which isn't a great place to be if you want DX10.

Persoanlly I quite like the AMD uATX boards
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=622461
or
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=564802

they're feature rich and offer great value for money.
This way you would leave enough for something like an 8800GTS 320mb which is a great card for gaming.

there are loads of good AMD board's for £50 or less on scan I don't honestly know which is best.

Have you considered Intel for your upgrade?

[EvilMunky]

Thanks for that Mike.

Its possible I will be able to get a bit more cash for the Display card - will have to wait n see for a few days.

As for Intel - its just a personal thing but for me its AMD all the way. Cant really explain it but AMD over intel and NVIDIA over ATI.

[staffsMike]

I still want to support AMD tbh.. never feels right recommending intel but it is the best for the money for right now..especially if you overclock.

AMD still offer great value for money if you ask me though.

[DanceswithUnix]

I think everyone here has defected to Intel

If you are gaming, you are better off with an Intel CPU.

If you want to stick with AMD, do you want to overclock?
That 8GB of RAM is pretty expensive (last I looked anyway) as it will have to be in the form of 4x2GB sticks, and those 2GB sticks cost a lot.

May I ask what is driving this upgrade, I presume something must be feeling slow? I find under Windows I get very little advantage from dual core; the virus checker is less painful but that is about it for my everyday work and gaming. Linux utterly flies, specially at bootup, but if I had spent serious money on my upgrade (3000+ to X2 3800+, both mildly overclocked to 2.4GHz) I think I would feel robbed.

It could be you only need a graphics card.

[EvilMunky]

I have to admit Its been a long time since I used an Intel chip in my personal machine and maybes thats some of the reason Im avoiding it. I used to dislike them but now I just prefer AMD. However, as i mentioned I really havent had much to do with Hardware for a couple of years now.

It is tempting to bite the bullet and try an Intel Chip - no idea where I would start tho.

The drive for the upgrade is a relatively basic one. I am running Vista for a number of reasons. Performance in geneal on this seems to be a bit slow and sluggish - compared to brand new machines I have at work which run vista.
Couple that with the fact I can hardly even load up Bioshock without it crashing, along with a number of other games and things, I think its time for an overhaul. Its tempting to just buy a bitching GPU but I dont think that is the only bottleneck in the system.

With regards to memory - i would only be putting 4gb in now and then cycling them out into my other machines over time, replacing for 2gb chips.

So, for similar money - what mobo and intel chip would I be looking at?

[Max Tractor]

Personally I have had AM2 boards....

Foxconn N570SM2AA
EVGA 590 SLI(rebadged foxconn)
Abit NF-M2 nView
Biostar TForce 550
Biostar TForce 560 A2+

The Biostar TForce 550 would be my pick everytime, such a great board at a great price, I don't think you can get them anymore, they were very hard to get in the UK anyway, so I would suggest a look at the Biostar TForce 560 A2+ £43 from here, also there is usually good support from rebels heaven for bios for the biostar boards

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...0&tid=tf560a2+

[DanceswithUnix]

You don't mention what graphics card you currently have.

Have you checked out some benchmarks to see how far up your current card should be getting?

You probably need a graphics card anyway, would get that first (unless your current machine is AGP) and see how that goes. If that is not upgrade enough, then you can use it in your new build.

[staffsMike]

with a £400 upgrade assuming its for games and you want the 8800GTS 320MB (only way to go really)

You will have £230 ish left.

Best way to go here is

Abit IP-35 (good overclocker..nice and cheap) - £80 There is an E version which is also very good for £60
(at the top of this page http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...Thumbnails=yes)
Ram as above - £94
this leave's a measly £45 (with the IP-35, £65 with the E version) which means you can only really get a pentium dual core. They overclock well.. circa 3.0GHz and above for a lot of them..but it's a risk.

Add £30 and you can get an E4400/E4500 which will overclock nicely to 3.0GHz

[EvilMunky]

OK - here is my current thinking :

LN18913
Abit IP-35, iP35 Express, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £68.79 £80.83

LN18120
Intel Core 2 Duo E6320, Socket 775, 1.86 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail £85.29 £100.22

LN17640
320MB Asus 8800GTS PCI-E (x16), Mem 1600 MHz, GPU 500 MHz, 96 Streams, 2 x Dual Link DVI-I/HDTV


Can i leave the memory and use my ddr 3200 memory from my current board? until a month or so down the line?

[listy]

no ddr2 only im guessing your 939 will be ddr 1 unless you get asrock board that can take ddr1 or ddr2

[EvilMunky]

ahh bugger

well maybe i will hjust spend a bit more than i was planning on hehe

[staffsMike]

you would need an Asrock motherboard that supports both ddr1 and 2.. bit rubbish though I don't like the look of them.

If you can live with 2gb of memory for now just get 2GB of the stuff from before.

the IP-35, 8800 and the E4400 (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=577091)

it has a lower FSB than the E6320 and has higher clock speed stock so it will overclock a lot better without pushing the motherboard's limits at all.. you will barely reach the motherboards stock speeds actually. It's best way to keep your pc alive for the longest period of time possible

What PSU are you running currently?

[EvilMunky]

Ahh nice one.
I can probably stretch a bit extra to still get the 4gb with the stuff above.

Power supply is a tagen 600/700w i think - cant remember and am at work at the moment. Should be man enough for the job I beleive.

[s_kinton]

Ahh nice one.
I can probably stretch a bit extra to still get the 4gb with the stuff above.

Power supply is a tagen 600/700w i think - cant remember and am at work at the moment. Should be man enough for the job I beleive.

That Tagan will be more than enough to power all that. The spec you listed above looks like the way to go to me.

[DanceswithUnix]

One note: We are probably about a month or so away from Nvidia releasing new graphics cards. Rumours are flying around, but in reality no-one actually knows what they will release, but they do have a fairly regular schedule at which they release *something*.

Given it is all speculation, up to you whether you let that influence your graphics card choice