Retro upgrade corner

[fthlagen]

Hello Hexus.

Machine from 2005(AD) no longer plays new games because GPU (ATI X800) does not support pixel shader 3....

Therefore, new GPU required. Current GPU is AGP but would prefer to upgrade to PCI-e.
Would also prefer to keep my socket 939 CPU (an AMD FX53).

So I am in the market for recommendations on new motherboard.
Needs to be socket 939 and pci-e.

Any special mobos out there I should consider?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH,unless you get a secondhand motherboard from Ebay it is pointless getting a new socket 939 motherboard as the cost is way too high. Also the CPU is way too slow and even a sub £30 Sempron will be faster nowadays. AGP graphics are also a niche market meaning they are not cheap for the performance they offer and even then your single core CPU will be a bottleneck for many newer games.

Even for around £240 you could an Athlon II X2,2GB of RAM,a new motherboard,an HD4730 and a new 500W PSU.

[Pob255]

pritty much what cat said, you could get a cheap x1950pro agp or 7series nvidia
or a 3650 agp although personally I think that's more of a waste than any thing.
Which leaves you looking at a probable total system upgrade.

[scaryjim]

you could get a cheap x1950pro agp or 7series nvidia

difficult on AGP - ebay auctions for these cards tend to roll up to £40+ very quickly: although you could make some of this back selling your X800

or a 3650 agp although personally I think that's more of a waste than any thing.

Performancewise a 3650 wouldn't even be an upgrade - but there are 4650 AGP cards available (is that what you meant, Pob?) new for about £60 (yes, there's a massive premium for new AGP cards...). However, as CAT said, your CPU would be a significant bottleneck to any worthwhile GPU upgrade - time to go the whole hog, I think

[fthlagen]

Oh well, consensus then.

Thanks for the tuppences' worth.
F.

[DanceswithUnix]

I had to go quiet a long way back to find the X800 in benchmarks.

This Anandtech one puts the X800 at slightly lower performance than a 7600GT. That maps to about an 8500GT in modern terms. I mapped performance to equivalent Nvidia as they are still selling/rebadging the 8500 so it is easier to find in modern benchmarks

Wouldn't the integrated graphics in a modern 785+sideport board just about keep up with that? If money is tight, that would make for a nice cheap upgrade for now by buying mobo+ram+cpu and save for graphics later without losing anything in the meantime.

[Pob255]

Umm that's not really that cheap an option DanceswithUnix
However I agree with what you say, baically it's best to run a total upgrade than try to replace the agp card.

[DanceswithUnix]

Umm that's not really that cheap an option DanceswithUnix
However I agree with what you say, baically it's best to run a total upgrade than try to replace the agp card.

No total upgrade is going to be *cheap* cheap, but I figured replacing the AGP card with integrated (for now, as it isn't an upgrade in speed just in features) will defer the cost of the graphics card, and at least you get the benefits of a modern multi-core cpu & faster ram in the meantime.

New PCIe S939 boards seem to be around 50 quid, so a motherboard replacement isn't cheap either.

785 chipset motherboard is £67 quid.
Athlon II dual core £44
4GB of DDR3 is about 70 quid.

180 quid with more to spend later, vs having to find the full ~240 quid to do it all in one go including a graphics card?

[noveltylamp]

If you have access to the classifieds section and create a wanted post i'm sure someone will have a suitable board. I have a DFI NF4 Ultra-D motherboard I can sell but it's against the rules to conduct a sale outside of the classifieds section, perhaps a mod can grant you access based on your long time here on the forums I don't know but if i remember correctly you need 100 posts.

[scaryjim]

If you trawl back through the Hexus reviews you'll find that an X1650, which roughly equates to an X800 performancewise, performs as well as, or better than, an HD2600. An 8600GT (= 9500GT) is generally just about ahead of the X1650 - but its all very dependant on the game title and IQ settings you're running.

The HD4200 lags significantly behind an HD3450, which has identical performance to an HD2400. So the integrated graphics on a 780G / 785G and even 790GX board would be a significant performance drop against an X800 (although they would obviously have the necessary featureset (DX9c) to play the games the OP is struggling with). A cheap AM2+ board and 4650, at ~ £75 total, would be a much better investment, tbh...

How do I now all this? I've been pondering an upgrade to my 9800 Pro for a while now, and I wanted to know where all of the different models stood in relation ot each other

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have been looking to upgrade my old XP2800 rig with an AGP graphics card which can offload flash decoding from the GPU. Nvidia do not do any of the 8 series or 9 series graphics cards in AGP although the HD4650 is available in AGP form. However apart from the HD3000 IGP it does not seem that any of the other HD3000 AGP cards support flash acceleration or am I wrong?? An HD4650 AGP is a bit too expensive for my purposes though and I have not seen any of the HD4350 AGP cards for sale in the UK either.

[scaryjim]

However apart from the HD3000 IGP it does not seem that any of the other HD3000 AGP cards support flash acceleration or am I wrong??

You are not wrong, I'm afraid. According to the latest Catalyst (9.11) release notes GPU acceleration of Flash content using flash player 10.1b is restricted to 5k and 4k series cards - it's not even supported on 3k PCIe cards as far as I can tell...

I was considering the same possibilities for my Athlon XP system, but realistically I think replacing it is the only sensible option...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You are not wrong, I'm afraid. According to the latest Catalyst (9.11) release notes GPU acceleration of Flash content using flash player 10.1b is restricted to 5k and 4k series cards - it's not even supported on 3k PCIe cards as far as I can tell...

I was considering the same possibilities for my Athlon XP system, but realistically I think replacing it is the only sensible option...

However there is also the PCI versions of the 8400GS and HD4350 so this could be cheaper way to upgrade the system:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...-DVI-I-S-Video

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/184001

I have been trying out Windows 7 RC1 on an XP2800 with 1GB of RAM,an 80GB 7200RPM WD IDE hard drive with 8mb cache and an nForce2 IGP and it has been running quite smoothly. Only HD flash seems to cause problems though.

[scaryjim]

Wonder how many PPD you could get folding on a PCI 8400GS...

[nibbler]

I could find out if you want. (Not that I know how to check.) BTW, the 8400GS is a great card for the price, I'm more than impressed that I can run cod4 with high res

[DanceswithUnix]

If you trawl back through the Hexus reviews you'll find that an X1650, which roughly equates to an X800 performancewise, performs as well as, or better than, an HD2600. An 8600GT (= 9500GT) is generally just about ahead of the X1650 - but its all very dependant on the game title and IQ settings you're running.

The HD4200 lags significantly behind an HD3450, which has identical performance to an HD2400. So the integrated graphics on a 780G / 785G and even 790GX board would be a significant performance drop against an X800 (although they would obviously have the necessary featureset (DX9c) to play the games the OP is struggling with). A cheap AM2+ board and 4650, at ~ £75 total, would be a much better investment, tbh...

How do I now all this? I've been pondering an upgrade to my 9800 Pro for a while now, and I wanted to know where all of the different models stood in relation ot each other

If the OP said they had an X800 XT then I would agree, but instead they said they had the X800, from which I take it they have DDR2 ram, fewer cores and much lower clocks. That Hexus review gives a 1650xt, which again is double the resources of a 1650 and way better than an X800.

A while ago I upgraded an old P4 3.0GHz with hyperthreading machine for someone, and dropped in a dual core AMD 7850 (they were'nt around for long were they!) on a 760 chipset motherboard and the integrated graphics ate the AGP 9550se graphics the machine originally had. ISTR the 785 is about twice the performance of the 760? (though the 760 was a trivial overclock).

I would worry about recommending a very cheap motherboard to someone with a history of buying an FX cpu, it might go pop if you drop a (now quite affordable) 125W cpu in it in future