need advice:Mainboard upgrade

[1nnipoo]

Hi there guys.

Just had a couple of Q's i wanted to ask aye.

Basically i've got a old MK40VN motherboard : specs are SHUTTLE COMPUTER MK40VN
SHUTTLE MK40VN KM400, 333FSB, SOCKET A, 2PCI, AGP8X, CNR 2DDR333 DIMM, AUDIO, VIDEO, LAN, UDMA 133, USB2.0 MICRO ATX,

which fits my 2800+ Athlon CPU and gf2 mx/mx400 gcard and was wondering what i would need to change gcard into a radeon x300SE 128mb gcard. Because my cool friend just gave the radeon for free!. (pretti kool) and just don't know what motherboard requirements i would need to fit this radeon.

Hope its not too much trouble guys!

cheers

[chazt]

unfortunately i don't think there are any socket a motherboards with pci-express. you'd have to upgrade your cpu as well

[1nnipoo]

really!? OMg thats sad that means my upgrades would cost more than my gcard?

[chazt]

afraid so. you'd be looking at apending at least £70 for a new cpu/motherboard upgrade, for which you could buy a half decent agp graphics card that would fit your current system

[philipbain]

The most advanced chipset to be used on Socket A was nForce 2, so considering that PCI-E was only introduced to AMD platforms with nForce 4 then it shows just how much the platforms and CPU technology has progressed. Having said that if you were to upgrade to a newer motherboard and CPU it would also give you much better perforance too as well as allowing you to use your freebie graphics card

[1nnipoo]

yeah, you guys r right, indeed better performance but i dun need it since i got some games and they're working fine atm but yeah, if i upgrade to my radeon would i need a new motherboard for the PCIE and derefore a cpu or Cpu's work with either technology.

cheers

[ajones]

Unfortunately the mobo you'd need to support PCIEx would not support your Socket A CPU. So, it's not that Socket A won't work with PCIEx, just that there's no mobo (at least that I've heard of) that has both Socket A and PCIEx. I'd guess that this is because there's no chipset that supports SocketA (ala. nForce2) which also supports PCIEx (ala. nForce4)

[1nnipoo]

dam, well thanx a lot ajones, philipbain and chazt for da replies, appreciate it aye, guess i'll just keep this gcard for the near future, mite come in handy sometime

cheers guys