Upgrade advice needed

[steve threlfall]

Hi guys. I am upgrading my ageing rig and i could do with a bit of advice.

I have/am getting:

400gig sata 150 hard drive
Opteron 146 (to be overclocked hopefully)
Decent Silverstone PSU

I was planning on getting one of the retek x850xt's as a cheap card to last me until i can afford something faster.

I have 1024mb of decent 3200 memory (2*256mb and 1*512mb sticks) will i be able to use this until i can afford a 2gig kit?

What motherboard should i go for. This NF7-S in my current rig has been great. Its been solid as a rock and great for overclocking so im hoping to get something more up to date with the same attributes. I could do with an inbuilt soundcard like soundstorm if they still do that with an optical cable connector to plug in my surround sound system.

What cooler should i go for to allow me to overclock the 146 while not deafening me like a delta?

[teachmech]

With that opty you need two matched sticks of memory for it to run dual channel. So either a matching stick for the 512 or buy 2 x 1GB.

I assume you are going pcie but you need to give a price range before we can recommend a motherboard.

Soundstorm no longer exists, but some on board sound do have optical out.

the arctic cooling freezer 64 is a good cooler for about £12.

teachmech

[excalibur2]

erm you have a mobile barton, great overclocker...........to me it doesn't seem much of an upgrade from an overclocked 2500 Barton to an Opteron 146 (even overclocked).

But if it's your hobby why not.

[steve threlfall]

erm you have a mobile barton, great overclocker...........to me it doesn't seem much of an upgrade from an overclocked 2500 Barton to an Opteron 146 (even overclocked).

But if it's your hobby why not.

Really?

This particular chip is unstable at anything over 2.3 and i was under the impression that a decent clocking opteron would be a significant performance increase

As you can tell i am out of the loop. I was thinking about £70 budget for a motherboard.

[steve threlfall]

With that opty you need two matched sticks of memory for it to run dual channel. So either a matching stick for the 512 or buy 2 x 1GB.

I assume you are going pcie but you need to give a price range before we can recommend a motherboard.

Soundstorm no longer exists, but some on board sound do have optical out.

the arctic cooling freezer 64 is a good cooler for about £12.

teachmech

Yeah it would be pcie. I thought that most decent 939 boards were pcie only now. Would i be able to use the ram i have, just without running dual channel until i get a 2gig kit?

[steve threlfall]

Having read some reviews the Abit AN8 seems to tick all the boxes.

Can anyone tell me if i would be able to use my current RAM with it (albeit not in dual channel mode) until i get a 2 gig kit?

[excalibur2]

Really?

This particular chip is unstable at anything over 2.3 and i was under the impression that a decent clocking opteron would be a significant performance increase

As you can tell i am out of the loop. I was thinking about £70 budget for a motherboard.

2500 Barton should do 2.5-2.7ghz
Opteron 146 should do 2.5-if lucky 3.2ghz

So is £40 for chip, plus MB cost, for 500mhz max is it worth it?
If you play games, I would put that money towards a good graphic card.

[teachmech]

Upgade to an opty is well worth it clock for clock an A64 outperforms any xp, even slightly slower A64 outperforms an xp.

Your ram should work but as you say in single channel.

Any Nforce4 board will be ok try an ASUS or MSI.

Have a look on here for some good nforce4 boards.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...=391&OrderBy=3

[steve threlfall]

2500 Barton should do 2.5-2.7ghz
Opteron 146 should do 2.5-if lucky 3.2ghz

So is £40 for chip, plus MB cost, for 500mhz max is it worth it?
If you play games, I would put that money towards a good graphic card.

Should do but doesnt. This mobile barton cant go above 2.3GHz stable unfortunately.

Current mobo has no pcie slot so i would be very limited in terms of future upgrades.

[steve threlfall]

Upgade to an opty is well worth it clock for clock an A64 outperforms any xp, even slightly slower A64 outperforms an xp.

Your ram should work but as you say in single channel.

Any Nforce4 board will be ok try an ASUS or MSI.

Have a look on here for some good nforce4 boards.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...=391&OrderBy=3

Cheers for the advice

[excalibur2]

Should do but doesnt. This mobile barton cant go above 2.3GHz stable unfortunately.

Current mobo has no pcie slot so i would be very limited in terms of future upgrades.

Any reason why you didn't consider dual core opteron 165 some of those can reach 3.2ghz? Which is a nice intermediate upgrade, from an old system until you get to the C2D intels.

[steve threlfall]

Any reason why you didn't consider dual core opteron 165 some of those can reach 3.2ghz? Which is a nice intermediate upgrade, from an old system until you get to the C2D intels.

I am out of the loop hardware wise. Im sure this will do the job nicely until i move on to the core 2 duos.

[excalibur2]

I am out of the loop hardware wise. Im sure this will do the job nicely until i move on to the core 2 duos.

AMD dropped a clanger in stopping the supply of the opteron 165 to the general public, put me off them (AMD) as it seems they were attempting to starve the overclockers, so am glad the C2D came a long showing the two finger salute, which I will be getting soon when the Intel price reductions feed through.