is my asus a8n-e outdated?

[EviLalpha]

Hey guys... i have had my asus a8n-e for quite a while and it is a true champ
im running it with no main issues..

system:
amd x2 4800+ (san diego 939 core)
2 gigs of corsair pc3200 ram
250sataII HD
audigy zs2
and im waiting for my 8800GTS 320 to arrive any day now (upgrading from a 7800gtx)

anyways since im upgrading my vid card, i was wondering if theres anything else i could upgrade to make my pc better in any way,
i was thinking about adding another 2 gigs of ram or something like that...

is the a8n-e still a good board on the market or is it kind of outdated?

any one got suggestions?
thx

 

[JustaGeek]

Leave the true champ alone.

Add your new Video Card, and maybe another 1 Gig of RAM (unless you're running the 64-bit OS - in this case, add 2 Gig).

You're good for at least another year.

 

[NXIL]

Hi E,

your A8N-E and 4800 X2 system is, as you say, a true champ--it's not a dual Barcelona quad core system, but, it's a fine PC.

Compare your gear to the average PC used on Steam/Half Life:

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Here you can compare your X2 at 2.4Ghz to some other CPUs: I have it set to directly compare to the Intel Core 2 Duo 6600:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/...6&model2=432&chart=195

8800GTS: awesome.

To upgrade, you will need new memory, along with the CPU and motherboard.

Anyway, with Barcelona about to come out, new Intel chips on the way, DDR3 supplanting DDR2, unless you have a game or program that needs a lot more horsepower than 2 x 2.4GHz, I would suggest you save your ducats and wait to see how the Barcelona/Tigerton/beyond competition and comparison shakes out.

The nice thing about the A8N-E/nForce 4 platform: any bugs are pretty well worked out, should be very stable, no surprises....like the P35 chipset double boot bug; looks like the X38 chipset for Intel is going to run very hot, etc....and, with the transition to DDR3, I would guess there will be some bugs/issues that will need to be worked out...may I suggest you let someone else deal with that? (Remember the nVidia nForce4 "built in firewall"? Great firewall, nothing got in or out, ever....looked great on paper, as I recall....)

More memory? If you upgrade to 4GB, you will net 1GB for a total of 3GB, due to the 3GB memory limit in Windows. 2GB is pretty good right now, at least for XP.

So, recommend you wait until the quad cores are completely mainstream like dual core is now--game software will catch up with quad core too--

HTH

NXIL