Am I making the right decision?

[aakerman]

My old mobo + cpu gave up, so I have to upgrade now, no choice.
I don't really need a faster computer than what I had (an 2800 barton), but maybe when
Quake Wars comes out sometime this fall I'll need it.

So I was thinking of going with this:
AsRock s939Dual motherboard - this has both PCIe and AGP slots, that way I can still use my old radeon 9800 pro, and then upgrade to a PCIe card when the need arises.
Plus an AMD64 3700+ (san diego, in a box).

Or, should I spend about three times as much, and get an:
AMD64 X2 4200+, Geforce 7900GT and another motherboard?

 

[Bobthelost]

Nah, the first option sounds like the best idea to me.

 

[Praxis1452]

first option and you can upgrade to am2 withthe adapter

 

[1N0V471V]

X2, 7900GT, DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR.

You will never use that stupid adapter on that motherboard, and having an AGP and PCIe motherboard sounds ok on papaer, but in practice could cause some problems.

AM2 won't be that great anyway. If you want to wait for anything it's Conroe.

 

[aakerman]

What's am2? And what's this talk of an adapter? Can't I plug my AGP card directly into the motherboard?

 

[aakerman]

ah just read up on it.. well sounds like it's option 1 then, because i'll be able to use the adapter when the time comes.

 

[Bobthelost]

Yes you can, but the motherboard you chose can (in theory at least) be used with an AM2 chip in the future. Obviously we don't know how well it would do the job, but in theory at least it'd work.

 

[wolfman11]

This is exactly the same decision I just made. My AMD 2800+ barton core was fast enough, but I didn't want to spend $350 or so on an ATI X850XT video card for AGP.

So I thought long and hard about the X2 or dual core opteron. Instead went with Opteron 146 and overclocked it. It's at 2.5 stable on stock cooling and stock voltage. Can get this chip for $155 at www.tankguys.com. No regrets that I didn't go dual core.