Help with mobo upgrade

  Was going to buy a new pc, but have decided to wait a bit and have my spouse
build me a system later this year.

However, I did want to try Vista. I have used the Msoft advisor and I think
the specs are a bit misleading. Used Cnets, and I think theirs is a bit more
realistic, so my system needs to juiced up a bit.

I have an Asus P4-TE mobo with a Northwood P4 2.2 and a 1GB of rambus
memory. The memory is an issue, but I have 4 256 sticks on the motherboard.
To replace them with 4 512's is half the cost of a new system!

So, I have looked around the web for some motherboard/CPU combos and have
found some very reasonably priced with Prescott P4 3.0 ghz chips and
motherboards for under 150.00. I have not priced the memory needed because I
haven't yet selected a board, but I'd bet whatever it is,  it doesn't cost
whar RDRAM does.

What would be a decent selection for a CPU/mobo combination that would
accomodate such an upgrade. I would keep my GeForce6800 videocard and SB
Audigy card. The videocard is AGP so my selection of boards would be
somewhat limited.

Thanks a lot.

D.

 DotNettie wrote:

This is the "LGA775 AGP" list, and they tend to all be in the
"budget" catagory.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&N=2010200280+1070509908+1073407577&Subcategory=280

This one is an attempt to straddle the old and new worlds. It has
a PCI Express slot and an AGP slot. But the PCI Express is only
wired with x4 speed, instead of the normal x16. That is because
the PCI Express lanes actually come off the Southbridge. Also,
it has four DIMM slots, but two are DDR and two are DDR2. Which
means two sticks max at any one time. The comments here suggest
the AGP slot is the best for video, and maybe DDR memory would be
a good choice as well. But the thing is, if you want to reuse
the memory later this year, in a new build, you'd probably want
to go with DDR2. What I cannot tell you, is if the motherboard
is smart enough to automatically select DDR2-667 if you give
it DDR2-800. So the question would be, exactly what kind of memory
to use, so that you can get reuse of the memory later.

Asrock 775Dual-VSTA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813157092

Manual and CPU list.
http://www.asrock.com/manual/775Dual-VSTA.pdf
http://www.asrock.com/mb/cpu.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA&s=

    Paul

 
I would just try Vista (if you must - its not much of an improvement, if at
all).
I think your PC will run it, it just may be a bit slow.

I've got a better CPU than you (AMD X2/4600), but I've got a gig of memory
and a 7300GT video card (not that much better than yours) and Vista RC1 runs
fine on it.
Not that it will be staying on my PC, I'll wait until the first service pack
arrives I think.

Just a thought, why not install Vista alongside your existing o/s? This is
what I've done - mine dual boots Vista and XP.

SteveH

 On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:48:57 GMT, "SteveH"



Not to nitpick but a (plain vanilla) 6800 > 7300GT

 On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 04:52:47 -0500, "DotNettie"


I suggest a socket 754 based motherboard and Athlon 64.
They can be had for under 150, will outperform the 3.0GHz
Prescott, and provide an AGP slot.  They use DDR(1), common
PC3200 memory which is slightly more expensive than DDR2
now, but pretty similar overall.

Since you want to run Vista, 2GB of memory is advised but
better 2 x 1GB modules instead of 4 x 512MB for the new
motherboard.

I would be very hesitant to jump onto the cheapest prices
found with web searches, some of the products may be of
questionable quality and/or sold by companies with
questionable ethics and/or poor support.  For example Tiger
Direct, a shady company often selling poor quality boards
bundled with CPUs.  On the other hand some better retailers
include newegg.com et al.  Perhaps you know this, but it's
certainly something to be aware of if not, better to pay a
couple dollars more from a trusted seller for good branded
products (like Asus).

Even if you could find affordable Rambus memory, to get the
full effect from Vista it would be prudent to upgrade the
CPU (and as required, motherboard too) as it is a bit of a
mismatch paying a premium for a new licensed OS to upgrade
to Vista but run it on old(er) hardware.  Another way to
look at it is that there is enough savings going with an OEM
version of Vista to offset the cost of other parts, but you
won't want to tie an OEM Vista license to parts old enough
that they'd be too slow too soon to get the best long term
value.