AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

[Consultant01]

I have all the video card I need at the moment... an AGP x800 XT. I can run BF2 in all high/medium at 1280 x 1024 resolution at a solid 20-35 FPS... PLEANTY playable and if I drop a couple settings it gets even more solid...

My motherboard and CPU, suck the dong, however. An MSI k7n2 motherboard and a Barton 3200+ (UNDERCLOCKED to 1.8 ghz because of a bad capacitor).

I'm contemplating a mobo/CPU upgrade in the next few months but here's the thing... I have no desire to upgrade my video-card when I upgrade the other components... I can get a 939 motherboard from ASRock (great reviews) that has an AGP slot for now *AND* a PCIe slot for later... CPU and Motherboard for less than $300...

How long do you think "they" will make motherboards with AGP slots on them? I've always upgraded my PC in a rotating cycle, a new part per year... this year was the video card and the 2nd gig of RAM... come fall or winter it will be time to upgrade again and Im stumped as to what my future holds...

[TokenBrit]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

AGP is already dead to all intents and purposes, and has been for 6 months or more. I would give it no longer than another 6 months before it is gone altogether at retail.

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

My guess is they won't. The only company that made a true agp mobo was asrock, and I don't know if they're going to make a model for am2.

[Consultant01]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

thats depressing.... I hate when an industry forces you to upgrade 3 things when all you want to upgrade is 1 or 2.

[TokenBrit]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

It is inevitable that as soon as I buy DDR2 ram that DDR3 will be given a firm release date.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

intents and purposes

Thank you so much for not saying "intensive purposes".

But, yeah. I'm in the same boat. I've got a p4 3.0E, 2x512MB, an x800xt AIW and absolutely no justification to spend the money on an upgrade.

My suggestion would be to look on Ebay/newegg/tigerdirect for a for a barebones +3ghz p4 or AMD equivalent in an AGP MOBO. The agp/pci-e combo's seem too cluttered. With Conroe coming out soon, the major retailers will be dumping old stock, and the socket 478's are three (depending on where you start) generations back now. Even better comparable AMD processor's will have to go in order to stay competitive.

In short, I'd stick with GPU and jettison the processor, and at least freshen up the processor and the MOBO.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

Thank you so much for not saying "intensive purposes".

Who says that?

[Consultant01]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

people who've heard it said but never typed it.

I actually saw it typed "Intentsen purposes" (Intents 'n purposes)

[LoD]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

AGP motherboards are dead, only ULI, Sis and Via have any chance of putting an AGP native chipset out to market... ULI just got bought by Nvidia and the other two probably won't release anything.

So count all the motherboards out, as for Video they are pretty much extinct, but there are rumors of AGP 7600GT cards in the works... lets put it this way, there will probably be a few more AGP cards in the future, not many, but some, but NO motherboards.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

So count all the motherboards out, as for Video they are pretty much extinct, but there are rumors of AGP 7600GT cards in the works... lets put it this way, there will probably be a few more AGP cards in the future, not many, but some, but NO motherboards.

That's why I would reccommend anyone with a current mid/high-end (high-end last generation) vid card to stick with it until the technology leapfrogs again. Getting a decent last gen mobo + processor for relatively cheap that you can migrate all current components peripherals to makes alot more sense to me than DUMPING what is still (currently) a $200 gpu, in order to buy a $300 processor + mobo combo and ANOTHER $200 gpu (and maybe $150 in new/different memory, to boot).

There's nothing out there (or on the horizon) that a processor operating at a 3.0GHZ (or AMD equivalent) can't handle quite adequately. Unless you're doing heavy video work, the difference between a 3.0E (or AMD equivalent) and the latest dual-core CPU is effectively the difference between A SNEEZE AND A COUGH before the app opens. If not being able to cough before BF2 pops up, or not being able to type a letter to Uncle Bob while multitasking in BF2 are important, then one may need to consider dual-core, 64-bit, 4x1gb 533mhz RAM, with dual 74gb Raptors in RAID0. If, on the other hand, you separate the time between writing letters and fragging, the difference (esp. vs. the cost IMHO) is NOT APPRECIABLE.

I say stay with the high end "legacy" stuff, and let all the oober-leet upgraders pay a premium of their own money to become the dual-core, sli/cross-fire, next iteration of RAMBUS guinea pigs. And let the software developers catch up to the point where it makes sense to buy hardware that capitalizes fully on the software--e.g., 64-bit OS? Then buy a 64-bit processor.

[sackynut]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

if you have an ALbatron AGP card, you can buy this thingy that lets you put an AGP card in a PCIe slots, its a lil converter see here:

http://www.albatron.com.tw/english/it/vga/atop_page.asp

its pretty cool, but to my knowlege it only works with the listed Albatron Cards.
they MIGHT have some for other companies, or for AGP in general so look around google you might get lucky.

[clatch22]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

Single core Athlon 64 S939 CPU's are really dropping in price at the moment especially the 1meg cache models( San Diego cores 3700+ and 4000+) They overclock well and will handle anything you throw at them at the moment and for the next 12 months. The ASrock Mobo is an excellent piece of kit for the price but grab one quick as they are out of production now and are disappearing fast. The Uli chipset was good enough that between it and the 1687 chipset NVidia decided to buy the company. That Mobo and CPU combo would be an excellent buy for the current upgrade cycle and will allow you to upgrade to a PCI-e card at your next upgrade cycle then follow up with a new Mobo Cpu next time around. One thing to consider is that AMD have announced a 30%-50% cut in price across their entire range on the 24th July in response to Intel's launch of Conroe on the 23rd.

Also that Albatron adaptor was never officially released as it was going to cost more than buying a comparable or better PCI-e card.

[sackynut]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

it wasnt released? LOL wow gg albatron

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: AGP Cards and 939/AM2 motherboards

it wasnt released? LOL wow gg albatron

You need to leave the off topic section now. You can't even type proper english anymore! :shock: