Dead MOBO, replace or upgrade?

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 6:51 pm

Hey everyone, guess what happened to me? I finally fell victim to that eMachines bad power supply frying my mobo. Yay, I don't feel left out anymore...

So, I just wanted to hear some ideas, suggestions, and warnings that others might have to share. I hope this is rellevant here, it's not soley Video Hardware, but since I can't edit anymore until I get this fixed, I believe it remains valid. Plus, I've kinda grown attached to you all. Anyway, this is my current system, which ofcourse, is dead:
eMachines T2825
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 2.1GHz
MOBO: Socket A (462), 2 IDEs, 3 PCI slots, 1 AGP, onboard video
RAM: DDR-RAM 333 (PC2700) 512MB (Max. 2GB, one empty slot)
Everything else is either self explanatory or irrelivant.

Anyway, Option A: Replace the mobo with a similar one so I can reuse all my old components, (I'm assuming they all still work). This would be inexpensive and hopefully very easy. Especially considering I don't really need an upgrade at this time.

Or Option B: Completely upgrade my system.

I'm leaning toward option A for a couple of reasons. I don't have or soon intend to buy any programs that require upgrading, and am still mostly happy with my computers performance level. I'd like to save up my money to completely beef-up my other system down the road. And, it's cheaper to buy the replacement MOBO and PSU, (hoping that all the other components still work) than it would be to have someone diagnose everything.

On the other hand, there's no garuntee that my CPU and RAM didn't get fried along with the MOBO. And upgrading is just fun, "Charge It!" I'm curious about what people think concerning onboard video vs video cards, as well as PCI vs PCIE. My only serious concern revolves around IDE ATA vs SATA. I deffinitely want to use my old drives, cause they're still good. But are the technical advantages worth getting an SATA equipped MOBO?

So please, share your thoughts, help a poor man out with his indecision. Thanks.

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 10:11 pm

If you ask me I think you should just upgrade.
Just build a custom rig.
Now PCI-E 18x is way better then PCI and AGP 8x (PCI is almost equal to AGP 2x)
Also on board video with the mobo stinks really bad. I would suggest just stay from mobos with it because you are wasting your money.
SATA is twice as fast as ATA. There not really any disadvantages to it.
You should upgrade your processor too. If you wanna wait a little to july the Intel Core 2 Duo is gonna be released which is said to break all the old CPU barriers.
Also which chipset do you want to go with :
ATI CrossFire or nVidia SLi ?

and how much money are you looking at spending if you were to upgrade to a new system ?

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 10:31 pm

If only the Mobo is broken, then I recommend you replace only it. Test your RAM for problems and upgrade and/or add to them; there's never too much RAM.

As for upgrading your whole pc, it depends on if you're satisfied with its current performance.

I would rather save the money for something truly revolutionary, such as AMD's 4x4 capable Mobo's.

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 11:24 pm

lol or the quad intel core.
$$$$$

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 11:33 pm

I agree with lyrs on this one
if you are happy with your current system, it's probably better off replacing a few parts...

but...

upgrading is nice.
now to answer some of your questions.
I'd suggest going with pci-e (I think Joe88 meant pci-e 16x...I think)
faster, and a lot of video cards use the pci-e interface.

I'd just ignore the whole sli/crossfire thing for the time being, as its only practical applications are in extreme gaming.

imo, sata is much better than ata. smaller cables, faster data transfer.
sata raid is nice too. My computer (2 WD raptors in raid 0) starts up in about 10 seconds (but I hardly have anything on it)...compared to an older pre-built machine which takes about 3-4x longer.
(yes, I do realize that this isn't a fair comparison...but at any rate, sata is faster than ata)

a video card will be better than onboard video.
I have a GeForce6600 (which I haven't really gotten to test yet, but it handles Warcraft 3 easily) and am very happy. from my reading, ATI sounds like the preferred brand...but as long as it works for editing, I'll be happy.
when the time comes I'd look for a card with 256MB GDDR3 (or possibly 4 by then) pci-e 16x

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 12:00 am

Yea I ment 16x (pushed the wrong button) >_<

I just redid my who system.
Im waiting for the new cards.
ATI is gonna release the new R520 chip soon

a simple 1x PCI-E 16 card

ATI’s R520 to be Launched in June

“As per the current plans, we expect ATI to announce their new GPU(s) in June,” said Dan Foster, PR and marketing manager for EMEA region in an interview with t-break web-site.

The web-site claims that according to Sapphire, RADEON X850 XT flavour with 512MB of local buffer is unlikely to be a commercial products “because of the low yields,” nevertheless, the world “will see another ATI GPU-based 512MB card shortly.”

Late last year analyst firm Credit Suisse First Boston said ATI’s R520 chip had been taped out and ATI had completed wafer test on 90nm nodes from TSMC. The CSFB believed ATI would be on-track to introduce the visual processing unit (VPU) in Spring, 2005.

ATI Technologies did not comment on the news-story.

Specifications Unclear

Not much is known about the architecture and capabilities of the code-named R520 product that was initially referred as the R500. What is clear now is that the new graphics chip will sport Shader Model 3.0 – pixel shaders 3.0 and vertex shaders 3.0 – bringing additional programming capabilities to ATI’s future graphics processors as well as some other innovations.

Specifications of ATI’s code-named R520 VPU are unclear at this time. Some sources suggest that the chip may have up to 32 pixel pipelines and up to 350 million transistors, which makes the processor extremely complex. However, given that a new fabrication process is to be used for the manufacturing of R520, it is unlikely that the visual processing unit will be tremendously large in terms of transistor count and complex in terms of the number of pipelines. Fabless semiconductor designers tend to balance complexity of their chips for new fabrication processes. For instance, since 2002, ATI has not launched manufacturing of high-end graphics chips using a new process technology unless the technology was tested on mainstream chips. Still, even on relatively new manufacturing processes, ATI has set pretty high clock-speeds for its VPUs.

R520 – Shader Model 3.0 VPU

ATI’s R5xx architecture will not resemble that of the previous generation products and NVIDIA’s GeForce 6 architecture known as NV4x; particularly ATI will implement efficient flow-control, a crucial feature for pixel shaders 3.0, that will not bring speed penalty it does on existing SM3.0 hardware, according to sources. The future of the graphics hardware lies in higher number of ALUs ops per texture ops, unified pixel and vertex shaders as well as some other requirements of Microsoft Windows Longhorn operating system, such as virtualization and context switches. While ATI agrees on the long-term goals for its roadmap, it does not name feature-set of actual products and says all the architectural changes will be implemented gradually, not at once.

ATI Technologies’ developer relations manager Richard Huddy said during a conference in November, 2004, that the company’s future visual processing units would feature unified pixel and shader processing. While he declined to elaborate on the timeframes for such chips, he said unified pixel and vertex data processing was a required capability for Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0 that comes out together with Microsoft’s next-generation operating system called Windows Longhorn. On of the benefits the unified approach brings is ability to dynamically allocate chip resources depending on the demand for pixel and vertex processing, Mr. Huddy said. Another one is simplified software development.

Some sources claim that the R500 is a code-name of ATI’s graphics processor that will be submitted for Microsoft’s next Xbox console. The shader core of the R500 was reported to have 48 Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) that can execute 64 simultaneous threads on groups of 64 vertices or pixels. ALUs are automatically and dynamically assigned to either pixel or vertex processing depending on load. The ALUs can each perform one vector and one scalar operation per clock cycle, for a total of 96 shader operations per clock cycle. Texture loads can be done in parallel to ALU operations. At peak performance, the GPU can issue 48 billion shader operations per second, it was indicated.

The R520 is also expected to feature advanced memory interface, presumably supporting GDDR4 memory.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 2:57 am

Generally speaking, there is almost no difference between an equivalent standard ATA/100 (IDE) drive and a SATA one in terms of performance.

Now a pair of SATA WD Raptors with their 10,000 RPM rotational speeds in RAID-0 is definately going to spank anything short of a SCSI/SAS RAID with similar 10,000 RPM drives, or faster 15,000 RPM drives.

But real-world, transfer rates off of a single HDD currently don't begin to saturate even the lowly ATA/100 interface. Stick with IDE drives for now, but any future HDD purchases should be SATA since they will eventually replace ATA/100. Plus, the thinner cabling and no more master/slave jumper settings makes for easier installations.

Recommendation

If you are sticking with on-board video, then I recommend getting any Socket-A motherboard. PCI-E vs AGP is a moot point since there are no Socket-A mobos with PCI-E, only AGP. In fact, no Socket-A mobos have on-board SATA either (which can be rectified with a SATA PCI card, at least). AGP unfortunately is a dead-end street. PCI-E has effectively replaced AGP in the market for high-end/upgrade graphics. And AGP has disappeared on state-of-the-art motherboards altogether. If you went with PCI-E, you would have to replace your CPU too, which means +$.

You'll have to decide if you are going to dead-end this machine when you do actually upgrade, or start the upgrade process now and plunk some cash down for a current-tech mobo, CPU, and possibly memory.

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 6:25 pm

Also your gonna have to probably get a new PSU for a PCI-E power connector.
Or you can just use this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812189120

but you will have to sacrifice 2 molex 4 pin adapters for it.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 11:57 pm

unless you have a high-end graphics card, you don't really need the pci-e 6x connector (I think you need it for GeForce 7600 and above...and don't know what it starts to become necessary with an ati card)

but at any rate, I would suggest the Ultra X-finity psu
big, quiet 120mm fan
dual 12v rail
and from personal experience, the rails are stable
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... ode=373048
cables are long, it has the 6x power connector (as well as 20+4 for mobo)
flexforce cables are also nice...about the only thing it doesn't have is modular cabling (but the Ultra X-2 connect does... but this is $100)

I got mine for $80...and now it's $40 (with rebate)

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 1:59 am

this is the PSU I got
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817709004
its almost like the one above. spec wise
$83.99
you dont have to use all the cables either only attach the ones you need
and it comes with a LCD drive bay fan control. tells you the temp and you can up or lower the fan speed