Pci express motherboard

mrpotatoman

Member
Oct 26, 2004
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Heh I was just looking at a motherboard on the asus site for a pentium 4 socket 775. The motherboard supports pci-express. So can I still use my agp video with the motherboard. Need some info, thanx.
 

gobucks

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
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go with a 6600GT. It's $180 and has 9800XT speed and then some. The only time I would not be wanting PCIe right now was if I was looking for a top-end card, i.e. X800XT or 6800GT or Ultra. These are rare in PCIe, and cost an extra $100 or so over AGP equivalents. Otherwise, PCIe is the way to go. As for the CPU, are you a gamer, or what? If so, you aughtta be looking for an AMD system. Performance is better, price is lower, overclocking is better, and heat is much lower. Also, PCIe boards for AMD should be going for sale this week. Just my $.02
 

AristoV300

Golden Member
May 29, 2004
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No you can't use a AGP Video card on those boards. Also you need DDR2 memory which isn't too cheap either.
 

mrpotatoman

Member
Oct 26, 2004
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thanx the info all. Yah I am more of a gamer. Probably going to go for an AMD, more in the line of my budget.
 

gobucks

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
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btw, if you're looking for good bang for the buck, consider the following:

A64 3200+ @2.0GHz (overclocks to 2.6GHz on good air and Arctic Silver 5, could do the same with the 3000+, but puts more strain on the FSB) - $190 (OEM, so you can get your own HS/Fan and coolant)

Gigabyte, Asus, or MSI nforce4 Ultra (whichever comes out first) - $150 ish (could go SLI instead for an extra $50)

1GB Crucial Ballistix PC3200 - 2-2-2-5 up to DDR438, (officially 2-3-2-6), best latencies around at DDR500, overclocks past DDR550. Good with the 3200+ for overclocking. - $255

XFX 6600GT Dual DVI PCIe - overclocked 9800XT performance. Can run in SLI, and has PS3.0 for future titles and Video Processor for low CPU usage during MPEG-2 and WMA playback. - $185

Maxtor Diamondmax 10 300GB Hard Drive - Fastest 7200RPM drive around due to 16MB buffer, not a whole lot slower than a raptor, but with 4X the capacity. Also has Native Command Queuing for improved performance on new mobos, like nforce4 or VIA K8T890 (not an option on the new ATI chipset). Don't go lower than the 250GB model, because anything 200GB and below has only an 8MB buffer, so it's not faster than old drives. - $205

Good Heatsink/Fan - A lot of people like the Thermalright XP-90, and it does a great job, but it's kinda big and is $50 + price of a fan. If you wanna save a bit, I've heard pretty good things about the cooling power fo the Thermaltake Venus 12, for $30 including fan. Not quite as good as the XP-90, but still pretty good, should get some good overclocks. Also, get some Arctic Silver 5. It will let you run cooler and overclock better than with any other coolant, and tons better than the stock thermal grease.

For sound, if you care a lot, go with an Audigy 2 zs, or whatever the high end M-Audio is, depending on your preference. If you don't care too much, try the integrated sound. It will probably be good enough for a while. Also, Creative is working on a new Zenith line of Soundblaster card using PCIe to do things that weren't possible with PCI (maybe even Dolby Digital Decoding/Encoding, something soundstorm fans have been bitching and moaning about for a while now)

This should be a kickass gaming PC that will last you a long time, and give you an upgrade path as well.