First big upgrade to my 4 year old box

[imported_Zeke]

With the new Conroe release and the subsequent drop in x2 prices, I figure its finally time to move up from my athlon 2100 I put together in 2002. My concerns are the following:

1. I'm currently running 4 IDE hard drives and 2 optical drives, all of which I use pretty much every day. I need to figure out what is the best way to migrate these to one of the newer motherboards that dont seem to have and abudance of IDE slots now that SATA has taken over.

2. Price - I'm a poor college student. I already have an excellent power supply and case, so that wont be a problem. The ony reson i would consider a 939 chip is that I could keep my patriot ram which i happen to like, and conroe is still going for wel over MSRP.


3. Use - I do game a bit (oblivion, Rise of nations, and CS, would play more if I could coax my box into it), and my 9800 pro AGP isnt cutting it anymore. I would like to be able to use the standard 1680x1050 that my monitor runs at. I also multi-task pretty heavily (video encoding, music or movies, torrents, several browsers at once).



So what do you think my best path is? I've done alot of research mysef, but I'd ike to get some opinions.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

if you're poor just get a better agp card? Don't feel inclined to upgrade if you really don't have to. Your best bet to transfer those hard drives over is probably to install a PCI or PCI express based IDE card. Most new motherboard support only 2 IDE drives I believe.

 

[imported_Zeke]

Originally posted by: djmihow
if you're poor just get a better agp card? Don't feel inclined to upgrade if you really don't have to. Your best bet to transfer those hard drives over is probably to install a PCI or PCI express based IDE card. Most new motherboard support only 2 IDE drives I believe.

Yeah, I'm jsut getting sick of how slow this thing is, and it certainly wont make vista. I looked at AGP upgrade options, but my CPU is a good portion of my limiting factor right now(my roomate has a 165 opty and consistantly gets far better rates with the same card).

 

[HannibalX]

Buy a used AthlonXP 3200+ so you keep your motherboard/memory.

Buy a new AGP video card, I would pick the X1600 Pro with 512 MB but others might tell you different.


Optional:
Buy a drop in SATA controller (PCI).

Replace old, slow IDE drives with larger SATA drives.

 

[imported_Zeke]

Originally posted by: Trinitron
Buy a used AthlonXP 3200+ so you keep your motherboard/memory.

Buy a new AGP video card, I would pick the X1600 Pro with 512 MB but others might tell you different.


Optional:
Buy a drop in SATA controller (PCI).

Replace old, slow IDE drives with larger SATA drives.

I have to say that isnt somthing I've looked into, as I was sort of set on dual core, I'll look into it. I dont really feel like migrating 880 gigs of data to new hard drives at the moment.

Edit: the x1600 dosent look like it would be a huge upgrade from what I have now.

 

[imported_Zeke]

Anyone tried one of those sata to ide converters I see for sale here and there?

 

[BKLounger]

an ide controller can help you save your old hard drives. But with how technology is moving and it looks like sata is here to stay. Plop down some cash on a big data drive and just transfer the data over. Then sell the old drives to cover the cost.

 

[imported_Zeke]

Originally posted by: BKLounger
an ide controller can help you save your old hard drives. But with how technology is moving and it looks like sata is here to stay. Plop down some cash on a big data drive and just transfer the data over. Then sell the old drives to cover the cost.

The Dane Cook BK lounge?