1. #1
    LEBillfish's Avatar Senior Member
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    Hi All;

    Though I refuse to upgrade as in build an "end all" pc at this time due to so many new changes coming out....I'm starting to slow down a bit and believe my ram or processor is perhaps beginning to fail, so thought a moddest upgrade to get me by might be the trick. Trouble is I'm a pc weetawd, so how about some suggestions for
    Mother Board
    Processor
    Ram

    Here is what I have....Also know I have NO intentions of changing out Case/Power Supply/Graphics Card/Hard Drives at this time...this just a temp nudge to keep it chugging along.

    Case=Antec Plus 1080 full tower (so mucho room)
    Power Supply= ATX 430W (however, all fans, ALL are run from a seperate 230W power supply)
    MB= Intel ATX 845PE P4 with sound & Lan, AGP slot 8X & 6PCI slots (INTD845PESVL)
    GC= Nvidia 6600 AGP 256
    Memory= 1Gig DDR333
    Processor=Intel 2.53Ghz, 533fsb
    Hard Drives=6 ATA drives utilizing an ATA/PCI controller card
    CD/DVD= 3
    XP home
    etc.

    So, what I want is a
    Motherboard with AGP 8X, will take 2gb ram, has 4+ PCI slots, ATA type HD, and preferably LAN
    Ram 2Gb in 1 Gig sticks
    Processor, preferably Intel

    Not looking for the biggest and most powerful, yet know for next to nothing I can dramatically upgrade.


    SUggestions?.....Biggie is keeping the same hard drives without adding more, and the AGP & PCI slots.

    Thanks for your help,

    K2
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  2. #2
    Hi.

    Look for an 'Intel Core 2 Dual Core' or 'Intel Core 2 Quad Core' cpu. These chips are as cheap or even cheaper sometimes than the outdated 'Pentium 4' kind of chip you're using now, while being considerably more powerful and cool running as well.

    When comparing these chips, remember that the 'Core 2' chips outperform the 'Pentium 4' chips by quite a big margin, even when they're rated at the same GHz value.

    To find a motherboard that these cpu's fit onto you need to find a motherboard that has a 'LGA775' socket. Finding one of these that also has an AGP slot instead of a PCI express one could be problematic, probably to the point where you might end up having to ditch the 6600.

    If you were to replace your 6600 with an equivalent or just slightly better PCI express card, you'd be looking at something like a 7600GS, which aren't that expensive.

    The RAM you get will be dictated by the motherboard you get, which will require either 'DDR2' or 'DDR3' RAM (probably DDR2).

    There are too many brands and varieties of motherboards and RAM to be able to say which ones are best for you. I'd suggest finding a computer parts price-search engine and just wading in. Searching for 'Intel Core 2' cpu's, 'LGA775 socket' motherboards (AGP if you really have to) and 'DDR2' RAM.

    Sorry if you knew all this, was just trying to keep it basic. Hopefully some other people more knowledgeable than myself will come along and verify or correct what I've suggested. Good luck with it all.

    Les.
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  3. #3
    I may have found an motherboard that will let you use your old ram and video card and it does support 2 gigs of ram and 4 pci slots.

    http://www.ascendtech.us/itemdesc.as...848PA7&eq=&Tp=

    As for a CPU, the only single core that may work with the above motherboard is this one.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116004
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  4. #4
    -HH-Quazi's Avatar Senior Member
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    If you are looking to upgrade the processor LB, then it makes no sense not to go with a PCI-E mobo. You can an get equivalent PCI-E graphics card super cheap. Then a core2duo E6750 & 1GB of DDR2 memory.
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  5. #5
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    e6600 + 2gb ddr2 667mhz + mobo + psu + 8800gt (soon to be released are the 140 dollars 256mb edition, and the 512mb which would be a better investment)

    = a nice budget system to play il2 on and other games until BOB comes out in a year and a half

    honestly you'll see a world of difference with IL2...far larger air battles, smooth frames over cities, better picture quality, maxed out graphics and a sweet 100fps avg.

    9800gtx is slated for Q2 2008 release now, so an 8800gt would be a nice budget card to go for until newer tech comes along. Be sure to get a cheapish P35k mobo if u decide to upgrade, as this will give you lots of upgrade potential.
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  6. #6
    Originally posted by Aimail101:
    e6600 + 2gb ddr2 667mhz + mobo + psu + 8800gt (soon to be released are the 140 dollars 256mb edition, and the 512mb which would be a better investment)

    = a nice budget system to play il2 on and other games until BOB comes out in a year and a half

    honestly you'll see a world of difference with IL2...far larger air battles, smooth frames over cities, better picture quality, maxed out graphics and a sweet 100fps avg.

    9800gtx is slated for Q2 2008 release now, so an 8800gt would be a nice budget card to go for until newer tech comes along. Be sure to get a cheapish P35k mobo if u decide to upgrade, as this will give you lots of upgrade potential.

    Thats not a modest upgrade, thats buying a whole new pc.
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  7. #7
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    AGP is basically non upgradeable, shed be wasting her money. Unless you count trawling ebay to find cpus that will fit the motherboard.

    There are AM2 and 939 mobos about with AGP I think but theyre rare as hell and would offer little in the way of an upgrade. Then in half a years time when that system goes from long in the tooth to ancient (sorry billfish, my rigs ancient to) shed have wasted her money.

    My two cents, Im just trying to be honest.
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  8. #8
    SlickStick's Avatar Banned
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    I dunno, I'd be more interested in diagnosing what is being perceived as a slow-down, before you do anything. If there are no hard crashes or failures, most likely there is nothing wrong with the CPU or RAM or mobo. Your hardware should be fine until BoB comes out.

    Heck, I'm still on an XP2600 (333), KT400 chipset, Ti 4200 128MB, 2GB of DDR333, with an 80GB 8MB Cache ATA133 HDD and it still plays this game well with slightly lowered settings.

    What I would do intially, and you may already be doing these or some of them anyway, I'd grab a few free benchmarking tools and see if I could identify a bottleneck, un-install stuff that you don't use anymore, run some registry cleaners, defrag, double-check for spyware/viruses, and you'd be surprised what a fresh install of Windows will do for an older system.

    I'm not sure how much you can do by yourself, as you stated that you were a PC "weetawd", which I doubt, but reduced performance is most likely not a failing CPU or RAM, at least I do not believe it is in this case.

    Just my opinions and suggestions of course.

    You appear to be running allot of drives, but if after you do all of the above, another GB of RAM might be the best and quickest way to upgrade until a new system.
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  9. #9
    I'm with Quazi on this one.
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  10. #10
    LEBillfish's Avatar Senior Member
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    Hmmmm....Ok, well, I've lost Mother Boards in the past, yet am doubting that is it.....Now I'm debating..."go with just 2 gig of new ram (currently 1 gig of 2-512mb sticks)...and maybe an upgrade of a cheap AGP card, maybe even (doubtful) a faster (3ghz best I could go) processor"......

    Or, new mobo, pci-e graphics card, processor and ram....Not sure I want to do that before an entire rebuild it so close to rebuilding......

    Hmmmmmmmmmmmm......
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