need MB upgrade suggestions

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syseng

Member
Aug 2, 2001
42
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a little history
I replaced a ATI Radeon LE 32 graphics card in about January 2005 with a ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 256 MB. The system never accepted the new board. I followed all the directions and the system would boot and run for 2-15 minutes and freeze up or reboot. After a while, it would only boot in safe mode. I did all the registry cleaning, driver cleaning, loading about 20 different driver versions trying to get it to work and going through all the removals and driver cleanings in between - - but nothing ever worked. After over 100 hours of time wasted on the PC, I gave up. For the last 12 months, every time the PC boots, it recognizes new hardware and asks to install it and I always say no. After closing five or six pop-ups from XP (refusing to let it install the HW), the system runs fine. XP recognizes the graphics adapter as ?default? and it works to some degree. The system has been fairly stable unless the video is challenged such as a game or movie etc. then it freezes and crashes. Recently, even loading Microsoft?s ?critical updates? has resulted in XP installing the 9700 Pro resulting in the same crashes.

upgrade time
About six months ago, the on-board Promise RAID controller went out on the motherboard so I had to move the cables to the regular HD controller. Last week, the system failed to boot several times even in safe mode. When I finally go it to start, the event viewer log was full of CDROM controller errors. The old Thunderbird is too slow for editing digital photographs with Photoshop. Now, I am looking at upgrading the motherboard and CPU. Perhaps I can even get this expensive graphics card to work!

AMD or Intel
I really don't care which brand I use. I just want the most power for the $$. This week, I read several articles about how great the Intel Pentium D 805 overclocked. Some say that it is the base deal around. At about $120, it is at the top of my budget. What do you think, is this the best bargain today?

motherboard
I need AGP 8X for the Radeon 9700 Pro and ATA100 for my disk drives to work (I have a new Seagate 160 ATA100 in box). Any suggestions on which chipset may work with this video card? There was much suspicion that it was the VIA chipset on the Soyo Dragon that caused problems for the graphics card. Any suggestions on a good reliable overclocking board for $100 or less?


Compatibility Questions
Can I reuse the 5 year old 350W Enermax power supply?
Can I reuse the Corsair RAM? If so, how will it affect CPU performance?


Priorities
ATI Radeon 9700 pro compatibility
ATA100 disk drive compatibility
$$ motherboard + CPU cost $200
overclocking features


The biggest load on this PC is Photoshop editing. If I can get the Radeon 9700 Pro to work, we would like to play the NASCAR 4 game again.

I sure could use some good advice.

syseng

Motherboard = Soyo SY-K7V Dragon
CPU = Athlon 1.4GHz Thunderbird (stepping)
RAM = 2x256 MB Corsair 2400, CAS 2.0
Video = ATI 9700 Pro 256 MB
OS = Windows XP
Magnetic Disk Drives = 2 x IBM 60 GXP 60-GB
DVD / CDROM = Toshiba SD-M1502
CD W/RW = Plextor PX-W1610A
power supply = PS350EG Enermax Ultra Cool EG365P-VE 350W

 
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onioneater36

Member
Apr 24, 2006
32
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Although I don't have any good experience with the board, I have heard good things about the...

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 Socket 939 ULi M1695 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Available from newegg for $68. Supports AGP 4/8x or PCI-E (gives you a future upgrade path).

If you want most power for the $$$, I'd have to think you are looking at an AMD and if you want MOBO + CPU appx $200, I'd recommend

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 2000MHz HT 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - Retail

Available at newegg for $106 which puts you at $174. With the $26 left over, I'd invest in some DDR400, namely (to stick with 512 MB)....

G.SKILL 512MB (2 x 256MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model F1-3200PHU2-512ZX - Retail

Available @ newegg for $46. With all the shipping for these 3, that likely puts you at $250 with shipping. You'll like this G.SKILL kit for the tight 2-3-3-6@1T timings which are extremely desireable for the AMD CPU's.

The ASROCK board will let you run 4 PATA devices (ATA100) as well as 2 SATA 1.5 and 1 SATA3.

You should be able to reuse your Enermax, but I would not recommend the DDR300. Not sure if it would even work, but it would definately hurt performance.

This recommendation should cover your immediate needs as well as give you some future room to improve. Sorry I shot your budget by $50 bucks. Curious to know what other folks in the know think of my recommendation.
 
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syseng

Member
Aug 2, 2001
42
0
0
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 2000MHz HT 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - Retail

So you think the Athlon 64 3000+ will overclock to be close to the Pentium D 805?
 
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onioneater36

Member
Apr 24, 2006
32
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0
Here is an article where the compare the Athlon 3000 and the Intel D 805

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2736

The Intel D 805 outperforms the Athlon 3000 in many of the benchmarks demonstrated, but keep in mind that they were using a MOBO that would support DDR2-667. The MOBO suggested to you by SDPlissken appears to only support DDR-400. If you were to go with his MOBO suggestion, I would still highly recommend upgrading to the memory I spec'd earlier but you won't get the perf shown by the anandtech article cuz of the DDR-400, you'd likely get closer & closer to the Athlon.

You did say Photoshop & Nascar game were your biggest priorities. I could see a dual core (intel option) being nice for photoshop, buy AMD kills Intel for gaming and is certainly no slouch for photo/video either.

SDPlissken did give you a nice option for a budget dual core system, but consider the new RAM if you go with that. You would lose the PCI-e slot with that MOBO option removing some future upgrade options. I am still a big AMD fan ever since buying one. There performance is outstanding.
 
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