PCI / PCI Express question

[dynamota]

I built a computer about 2 yrs back.

It has a 480Watt Antec PSU, K8Neo 2 (socket 939 motherboard), AMD FX55 cpu, nvidia 6800 ultra video card(agp) and 2gig ram.

Ideally, I would have like to upgrade my motherboad, cpu and the graphics card. But dont have the $$ now. So I was thinking of just upgrading the video card.

After reading through the specs for the video cards (nvidia 7000 + series) and similar ati cards, I realized that all of them mention that they are designed for PCI express 16x. My motherboard has PCI slots.

So for these video cards to work, do they need a different PCI express slot? And that means a new motherboard?

Or do you guys thing, its better to revamp the whole system when ever I get to it (may be end of 2007)?

What is a resonable course of action?

tx in advance.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Yes, they need a completely different PCI-Express slot. Older motherboards with PCI and AGP will not work (though there are a few with AGP AND PCI-E).

Socket 939 and DDR memory are also becoming outdated. Throwing any more memory into those systems is pretty much pointless. YES, you can see a performance increase over your 6800 by upgrading to a X1950Pro, but that's $200-300 out of your pocket that will probably only survive the duration of this system. That same $200-300 could buy an even more powerful card with a brand new interface that will last you quite a bit longer.

Your computer isn't bad by any means. It won't scream through FEAR or Oblivion, but it can certainly run them. I would save up your cash and buy everything all at once. Plan around something like a Core 2 Duo E4300 / E6300, ASUS P5B, 2x1GB DDR2 memory, and a 7900GS, 7950GT, X1950Pro, 8800GTS or something similar. By the end of 2007, you could probably build a system that will run anything you throw at it (not including monitor, speakers, etc.) for around $1000 - less if you want to sacrifice a bit of performance.

 

[Randybob]

Yes, they will need an actual PCI-Express slot to work. Yes, that does need a new mobo. So what I would do is wait until you've got the cash to revamp the whole system. By then, there will be budget-friendly DirectX 10 cards, affordable quad-core processors, and the initial Vista bugs will probably be patched.

 

[dynamota]

was outta town.

Thank you guys for the suggestions. It makes sense to rebuild things from scratch.

dyna