Planning upgrade, have a few questions...

Laughing Mechanicus · Post by **Laughing Mechanicus** » 2006-03-03 10:12am

I made a similar thread about this before, but now I am to the stage of actually ordering components I need. Firstly here are my computers current specifications:

AMD AthlonXP 3200+ processor
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics
1GB (2x512mb chips) DDR400 RAM
ASUS A7N8X2.0 Deluxe motherboard
Audigy 2 sound
WinXP Pro

And here is what I'm planning on buying:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ socket 939 Dual Core 1Mb Cache
Asus A8N nForce 4 SLI ATX motherboard
PNY GeForce 7800GTX 256mb graphics PCI-E

Does anyone see any problems with that setup? From the reading I've done they are all compatible with each other.

A few specific questions though - will my current RAM work with the new motherboard/dual core chip? Also do I need a new power supply for the graphics card? I currently have a 500watt PSU, however I've read that PCI-E graphics card can require a special 6-pin power plug of their own.

Any advice or thoughts would be most appreciated.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-03-03 10:25am

Yes your RAM should work fine, most of the Vid card makers inculd a 4 pin to special Pin connector. If PNY does not it's a special connector that requires two 4 Pin connectors to equal that special six pin.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-03-03 10:39am

I would suggest a little RAM upgrade however that is not an obligation. Another questions is are you sure about that motherboard? You can get better preformance or better price by looking elsewhere. But Don't let that deter you from the ASUS, I'm using the A8N SLI Deluxe and have no complaints.

Laughing Mechanicus · Post by **Laughing Mechanicus** » 2006-03-03 11:31am

Ace Pace wrote:Another questions is are you sure about that motherboard? You can get better preformance or better price by looking elsewhere. But Don't let that deter you from the ASUS, I'm using the A8N SLI Deluxe and have no complaints.

To be honest the only reason I chose the A8N is because when I've used Asus in the past I've never had any problem with them and I wanted an nforce 4 chipset and I didn't go for the Deluxe version because the extra features didn't seem very useful to me. I'm quite wary about motherboards because I have tried other makes in the past (this was 5 or 6 years ago now ofcourse) and ended up with system that are terribly unstable.

If you have some suggestions for better ones though please go ahead. As you can probably guess I use this machine mostly for gaming and also working with memory intensive programs like Maya and PS as I mentioned.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-03-03 12:32pm

Not to derail the thread, but may I ask why you're upgrading such a powerful system already?

Laughing Mechanicus · Post by **Laughing Mechanicus** » 2006-03-03 12:45pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Not to derail the thread, but may I ask why you're upgrading such a powerful system already?

My system struggles running Maya and Photoshop at the same time right now (I routinely work on 4096*4096 images in PS, which takes a great deal of power) hence the new dual-core processor. And seeing as my current graphics card is AGP it wont be compatible with the new motherboard required for the new processor, so I need a PCI-E compatible model. Also all the things that I take out of my computer will go into my girlfriends computer, which has been displaying some instability of late probably due to an aging motherboard.