Originally posted by: VooDooAddict
I'd actually be more concerned about the Video. I thought that the AGP on the ASROCK was bridged to the old PCI Bus drastically limiting the bandwidth to the video card.
According to the following review, that claim is false:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/939Dual-SATA2/14
Originally posted by: VooDooAddict
Personally, I?d save a little longer and upgrade to an AM2 or Conroe Platform that would give you more breathing room in the future.
A reasonable option, even backed up with some homework.
But I think the essence of this argument hinges on the idea that 939 is dead and AM2/Conroe is the future. OK, but the AM2 processor being suggested isn't exactly cutting edge, and Conroe is higher priced, and 939 is going to be fine for another year or two at least.
My main point is that the differences between the two builds don't really get apparent until there are affordable AM2/AM3 processors which (a) give appreciable benefits in applications/games (b) are available and affordable. This is quite a ways off, and in the meanwhile, there's probably something that he'll gain in the difference between a bottom-end AM2 CPU and a mid-end 939 one.
So the real platform argument would be for Conroe. If you're picking a platform because you'll get a better CPU down the road (why else would you be picking AM2 over 939?) then it's much better to pick Conroe -- we know that at a mid-price, it'll outperform anything currently available from AMD; whereas we have no idea what AMD will actually come out with later and what Intel will have at that point as a response.
There's even an interesting build possibility to bring the price down -- using the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA. This board will do Conroe + AGP + PCIe + DDR + DDR2. The catch is that the PCIe is a bit crippled at x4. This probably won't matter at lower resolutions, but is a problem at the high end. I'd probably say that the higher-end video is more important for gaming than a Conroe processor, and pass on this build. It'd be a good choice if CPU > video. Unfortunately, for gaming, you often need high-end video to make that Conroe processor worthwhile, so it's kinda self-defeating. However, not everything is high FPS gaming.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=10
My suggestion is to try to get the processor "right" in this upgrade, with a view to the future. Just getting into a mid-range CPU, perhaps OC'ing it, and getting PCIe platform support, as a means for a substantial video upgrade sooner rather than later, is IMO a good approach. A mid-range 939 processor has the capability to compete with current low-end Conroe processors, and is suitable for a mid-performance target build.
As to the RAM, I think it's also OK, esp. at the lower end of CPU's. At the higher end, we roughly see application performance gains in the order of 5%-10% for a 100% RAM bandwidth increase. So this would have a marginal overall application impact.
Regarding the 754, it's fine until you upgrade the video, and then you'd have to buy another MB + CPU + video. It'd be bad then.
So we basically ended up where we started with -- a 939 build, with some thoughts on alternatives.
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