PCA Forums

Well, I'm in the middle of some upgrade woes.. I have two motherboards to choose from (already bought them) and I already have an A64 3200+ and 1GB of Geil PC3200 and 1GB of Corsair XMS PC3200.. Kind of curious what CPU I should get next..

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum.. NF3 Chipset.. accepts AGP Video Cards.

Gigabyte K8NF-9.. NF4 Chipset.. accepts PCI-E Video Cards.

I can put my current A64 chip in either of these. So, do I spend the extra money to go to an X2 CPU or should I just drop a couple hundred on an Opteron w/1MB cache? If I get the X2 I won't be able to get a very high end video card unless I wait quite some time and stick with a PCI Video card until then. Also to be taken into consideration is the future arrival of the M2 socket which will mean new motherboard anyways. If I get the Opteron I can go ahead and spend about $180 on a video card to go with this. Either way I will be getting rid of one of these systems. Not selling it, giving to a family member. So, any suggestions or recommendations? The only two things that remain to be purchased are the CPU and Video Card. All ideas and thoughts appreciated. Kind of thinking I should wait until M2 comes out to blow the dough on an X2 CPU or anything of the sort. And to go with the better Video Card would be the best bet.

eGo

My 2 cents. Forget the X2, get the Opteron, then get a good PCI-E vid card for the NF4 chipset. For $180, you can get a 6600GT 256MB, an X800GTO2 256MB, or even an ATI AIW 2006

Stick with the MSI in this case, according to Gigabyte, its Opteron support list is quite limited for that board. You will need to update the bios, regardless of which board you use.

Looks like I'm going to go with an Opteron 144 and then I'll start to focus on what Video Card I'm going to get. May also be picking up some more powerful RAM depending on my mood. I'm going to do some research on that ATI AIW 2006.. It's based on the X1300 so dunno if that's an improvement over the 9800 Pro I had or not. If it is, I may have an older AIW for sale.. Don't know yet.. Lots of stuff going on in my head about how I wanna do this..

eGo

If you do have an older AIW for sale, let me know which model it is

Radeon 9000AIW Pro... Again, not for sale yet, but may be at a later date.. Would also consider a trade for another AGP video card to go into the rig it's in now.. hehe..

eGo

hehe, the one that one would replace, you wouldn't want