S939 mobo recommandation and help

[globalcitizen]

Hey guys,

I am planning to upgrade my current rig to a s939 venice. I currently am not sure whether to upgrade to PCI express or not. I am not into the whole SLI thing because I need a best bang for the buck cpu which I plan on o/c moderatly.

Mainly I will be gaming and running some DC projects.

Here is what I am planning:

Venice 3000+ or 3200+ - whichever ends up being best bang for the buck
Kingston HyperX 1gb - already on its way
Current Aspire case w/ PSU
Seagate IDE hard drive

Here are my dilemmas:

Now I can stick with the current Geforce I have right now and get a Nforce 3 Platinum. But some of the Nforce 4 mobos are getting quite cheap and its a toss up. I dont want to spend more than $300 on the cpu+mobo combo. If I go nforce 4 I will get a Radeon X800XL or 6600 GT.

I am not sure whether a nforce 4 mobo is compatible with my current 20 pin PSU or not, this is a big factor as I do not want to spend an extra $70-90 for a 400W 24 pin PSU when I have a perfectly stable one.

So help me out here. I need to make a decision as if I got PCI express I will need to sell my 6800 and I would rather do it now.

Thanks for reading.

 

[MDE]

I don't see anything wrong with your current system actually. If anything just get the new CPU and overclock it.

 

[Scott66]

I am in the same situation as you, debating AGP and PCI-E. I have a really good MSI 6600GT AGP8 card so I am staying AGP. I will be going 939 but since staying AGP I will be using NF3. I looked at the MSI neo but way too expensive in my opinion unless you are looking at serious OC'ing. I narrowed it down to Gigabytes GA-K8NS Ultra-939 motherboard. It is also the 20 pin MB connector and for me an added benefit is the firewire 800 as I have access to an external Lacie 500 GB HD. Soltek also makes a good board but it is not Nforce but it is around $110. If you can get a good price for 6800 I would lean to the nf4 but not worry about the SLI because you will definitely will need a new power supply

I have been debating this for a week now myself as I have a Nforce 2 asus. Discovered that my 3 stick dual channel 1GB Ram won't work as 3 sticks will cause the new boards not to boot

 

[pilryu]

pci express all the way...

why?

1) AGP will be around for a year... or maybe two
2) PCI-Express will be around for at least 4-6 years

for gaming performance, you can pretty much just upgrade GPUs for a long time. for instance, I have comp with 1.4 P4 with 9800 Pro. It can run everything at medium settings.... half life at 1600x1200!!!

buy 3000+ ($140) with a decent mobo (you need OC options here) ($100)... and spend $170 for a 6600GT

cheap solution. but remember to get a mobo that can oc well, since 3000+ will oc very well (you could easily go to 2400 with it)