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AMD 939 socket board with PCI Express and AGP??

moemac8

Member
A buddy of mine wants to upgrade his system but can't afford to buy a new vid card and doesnt want to be stuck with a APG motherboard later when he can afford to switch to PCI Express. Are there any socket 939 boards that have both??
 
not that im aware of.

im not even personally aware of any 754/etc. boards that have a PCI-E 16x slot as well as an AGP slot
 
Not yet, but it's possible somebody will ship one. Socket 754 PCI-E boards are suppose to be coming.

Another possibility for him, though, is the MSI RS480M2-IR. It's a Socket 939 Athlon 64 motherboard with a 16x PCI-E graphics slot and an integrated Radeon Xpress 200 graphics processor. Your friend can run the IGP until he can afford to spring for the PCI-E card of his choice.

The Radeon Xpress 200 graphic core fully supports DX9 and the framerates are pretty good on most games if AA/AF isn't turned up too high. Far Cry and Doom 3 are playable at low res/med detail, but other games like Half Life 2 and Unreal Tournament 2K4 are quite playable on the integrated graphics core.

Another choice for your friend to consider is simply sticking with AGP. Almost all of Nvidia's 6000-series cards are available as AGP as well as PCI-E. The 6600GT is benching faster as an AGP solution than it is as a PCI-E card in many tests. ATI is also starting to ship X800-series solutions in AGP format.

PCI-E may very well turn out to be no real upgrade at all. A socket 754 motherboard with an AGP graphics slot looks a lot less obsolete than it did 60 days ago.
 
He has a Nvidia 5900 card right now, the base one, not the ultra. Would the intergated ATI graphics be much worse than that??
 
Originally posted by: moemac8
He has a Nvidia 5900 card right now, the base one, not the ultra. Would the intergated ATI graphics be much worse than that??


The graphics on the msi board are comparable to an x300
 
Originally posted by: ChineseDemocracyGNR
Actually it's a little slower than a X300SE. The FX5900 is much better.

I would agree with that statement. I would guess that the Radeon XPress 200 IGP would probably benchmark similarly to a Radeon 9550 or a FX5500 card just based on how it feels during actual gameplay.
 
Originally posted by: hondAS2ooo170
its either agp or pci-e

agp is dead now so there is now point getting an agp alot
see, that's incorrect. PCIe offers nothing beyond agp. Zero. 0.

Maybe at the end of 06-07 there MIGHT be a game out that shows some kinda of improvement on a pcie system over an agp system.

So no, agp isn't dead. It does and will continue to perform perfectly well in today's and tomorrow's games.

I suppose if he plans on keeping the same mobo for 2 yrs then it makes sense to go pcie now, but if not I wouldn't concern yourself overly much. THough i will add that pcie cards tend to be a bit cheaper than their agp siblings.
 
Two threads going about this subject.

I just chose to go the NF3 route. K8N neo2 Plat and a 90nm 3200+. Nice, reasonably priced upgrade (Monarch bundle even netted me a Steam copy of HL2)

There was no reason at this time to can my 6800nu.
 
Yeah. The biostar has almost the same service as ecs. No drivers, bios, or manual are available for download from the USA website. And for the 1 year warranty, you have to send them $30 for an exchange, if you get an rma approval.
 
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