cheap M/B CPU upgrade

[novice]

I have been out of the PC building/upgrading scene for a couple of years, and am considering upgrading one or two of our systems. (Our family has 5 at home, I built 4 of them from scratch a few years ago.) Current system specs are MSI KT-3 Ultra with Athlon T-Bred XP1700 cpu at 1.84 Ghz, 1 with 512 mb PC-2700 ram, the other with a gig of PC-2700 ram. And another with the Shuttle AN35 Nforce 2 board, Athlon T-Bred XP1700 cpu at 2.00 Ghz, and 512 mb of PC-3200 ram. I am looking at newegg's combo offer of Biostar's T-Force 6100 socket 939 board with a retail Athlon 64 3700 San Diego cpu for around $140.
combo deal
One of the KT3 systems just got a XFX Geforce 6800XT video card, while the others are still making do with Ti-4200's. We do play some games, counterstrike, half life, halo, far cry, and would like to try Call of Duty, too. I realize the new Biostar board is a PCI-E board, and would also require a new video card, but we could use it for awhile with the onboard video, and the PCI-E cards are cheaper than the AGP cards. The socket 939 board would allow us to use our existing ram. I realize this is not a state of the art system, but I would hope it would enable us to continue to use them for another couple of years. If the upgrade went well, I might go ahead and do the same to the other two systems, as well. (When you try to maintain 3 or 4 systems at the same time, you can't afford to keep all of them at "state of the art")
I am planning on buying my wife a new system sometime next year to replace her KT-600, Sempron 2400 based system. I don't think I can build one as cheap as some of these Gateway or HP systems that come pretty well equipped for $600 or so.
Appreciate any input or feedback regarding the Biostar board or the Processor.

 

[zeeon2003]

If you are looking to save $$ on your upgrade and want to use your old components you can take a look at:

ASUS P5PE-VM LGA 775 Intel 865G Micro ATX Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...1029&ATT=13-131-029&CMP=OTC-pr1c3watch
Intel Pentium D 805 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116001

Combined around $150 - you'll have a dual-core system.

or for the motherboard you can use:
ASRock 775Dual-VSTA Socket T - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157092

This motherboard has some good points:
1. Both AGP and PCI-Express slots for graphics
2. Supports both DDR and DDR2 memory
3. Core 2 Duo CPU support

Only point of concern is that the chipset is not Intel.

Intel P965 boards will give better performance, overclocking, and stability - but you'll need to change RAM and graphics card right now. Boards will be pricier too.

BTW, I hope you have deccent power supplies in your systems.

 

[novice]

Thanks for your reply. I really hadn't even considered Intel, since I have been an AMD guy for the past 5 years, always thought they offered the better performance bargain, particularly on the lower end. The IT manager where I work is an Intel fanboy, and he claims the new core2duo processors are the way to go for the future. I don't know though, I have had good luck upgrading motherboards that use the same chipset without even having to reinstall windows, much less reformatting the hard drive.

And as for power supplies, since I am not planning on running any $300 video cards in SLI, I figure to be able to get by on the existing units. A Sparkle 350W unit, a couple of Enlight 420W units, and a new Thermaltake 430W unit. I think the old Sparkle is rated 15A on the 12 volt rail, but all the others are rated at 18A, so I should be all right. If not, the Thermaltake 430W unit looks pretty good for the price.

 

[VTrider]

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you novice, I've been thinking about those Biostar combo deals for weeks now. Ofcourse, eveybody has opinions the trick being finding the right advice. I think it would be a wise choice to go w/combo deal. Cheap, noticeable performance gain, upgradeability (PCI-E), will be able to use old RAM, blah, blah, blah. Maybe i'm just trying to justify my decision too?

BTW: You can get that Biostar deal with the A64 4000+ instead of the 3700+ for $140.00 too, just OEM, will need heatsink I guess.

 

[novice]

Originally posted by: VTrider
I'm pretty much in the same boat as you novice, I've been thinking about those Biostar combo deals for weeks now. Ofcourse, eveybody has opinions the trick being finding the right advice. I think it would be a wise choice to go w/combo deal. Cheap, noticeable performance gain, upgradeability (PCI-E), will be able to use old RAM, blah, blah, blah. Maybe i'm just trying to justify my decision too?

BTW: You can get that Biostar deal with the A64 4000+ instead of the 3700+ for $140.00 too, just OEM, will need heatsink I guess.

I saw that Athlon 64 4000, but I like the idea of the retail version with HSF included. (Do they still offer a 3 year warranty on the retail CPU's?) I also like the idea of the San Diego core with 1 mb of cache vs. the available Venice cores. I would not even know which heatsink and fan to get for a 4000.... I have thought about just getting the 3200 Venice core model (cheap side showing again), but thought I should go ahead and spring the extra $20 or so, and not have to try to overclock to get there. I think I will go ahead and order. Maybe I can get it for installation next weekend. Wonder how tough it will be to install the new motherboard with a different chipset than the old one?