Future Upgrades

RealityRipple

So, I'm seriously considering the Athlon X2 4850e, due to the low power consumption, but I have a few questions. I want to be able to upgrade in a year or two to a phenom (or whatever else comes out later on) without upgrading my motherboard. I'm going to want an AM3 socket so I can upgrade to DDR3 if/when the prices drop. The 4850e is an AM2, and AM3's supposed to have backwards compatibility. So if I wait till AM3 comes out, get an AM3 board, the 4850e, and some DDR2 ram, I'll be able to upgrade to a new AM3 processor and DDR3 later on, right? I'm really liking the backwards compatibility thing, here. Or is it too good to be true, and I'm missing something somewhere?

kris23

theres really nothing at all wrong with AMD anymore, theyre dominating the low power and budget CPU market

DDR3 really is worthless to a low power user as there is no real bottleneck to begin with, DDR2 is fine.


alot of sockets are going to become EOL by the end of this year but they wont bee cost effective until theyve been on the market for at least a year after their release..... AM2+ is fine


there isnt much that can beat the 4850e X2, its cheap, very cheap and is hardly power consuming. its no quad and its no Core 2 but it beats everything else.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar GP WD5000AACS 500GB 5400 to 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards
Newegg.com - A-DATA Vitesta 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory
Newegg.com - AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor - CPUs / Processors

thats just about as good as it gets at the low power level.

RealityRipple

As nice as that all looks, I've already got a hard drive to use (400 gig Seagate, UDMA), I refuse to touch onboard video, and I need at least two IDE channels.

Looks like I was wrong anyway, and the backwards compatibility is the other way around (AM3 processor will work on AM2 boards), so I guess this topic was entirely useless.

kris23

you do know you can crossfire an ATI HD series card with the onboard GPU now right?

kris23

also, what do you mean 2 IDE channels? as in 2 devices or 4 devices?

each port can use 2 IDE devices....

and there are no recent boards with 2 actual IDE headers..... so 4 devices are out

RealityRipple

4 devices, and this has one. And I don't plan on playing any games, so any high powered video card at all is completely useless to me. I'm happy with my Radeon 9550, really.

Doing a bit of shopping, I was thinking of something like:
Newegg.com - AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor - CPUs / Processors
Newegg.com - JetWay HA04-Extreme AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards
Newegg.com - ASUS EAH3450/HTP/256M Radeon HD 3450 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards
Newegg.com - mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

I'm fairly certain that's all I need. The 4 gigs of 1066 RAM is because I want to be able to convert DVDs to video files while working on my programs and not notice a difference.

kris23

theres hardly any difference in speed between CAS 4 DDR2 800 and CAS 5 DDR2 1066

lastly, you do realize that the IGP in the 780G is probably more powerful than your 9550...... and its fully DX10 compliant

and you cant use it on a PCI-E board

RealityRipple

That's why this was on the list. Besides, my 9550 doesn't have a fan (and it's supposed to), so I really do need a new one. I just meant I don't need anything all that powerful.

The motherboard I posted has a memory standard of DDR2 1066 listed, and nothing else. If you're certain it'll run 800, then I'd be happy to go with cheaper RAM.

kris23

im just wondering, why do you need 4 IDE devices? IDE is a dead standard now and the crossover to SATA is almost complete....

id rather you get a more reputable brande than Jetway, never heard anything from them so you may have a mess if things go wrong

RealityRipple

I don't want to buy new anything if I don't have to. My CD and DVD drives both work just fine, and my hard drive is wonderful. I like the ability to upgrade later on, when things go wrong, but until then, I want to keep using what I've got.

RealityRipple

Would this be an option:

Newegg.com - SYBA SD-SATA-IDE SATA/IDE Adapter, Connect IDE Devices to SATA Port on Motherboard - Adapters & Gender Changers
Newegg.com - BIOSTAR A770 A2+ AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards
With the RAM you suggested previously?

kris23

the adapter is good but i recommend the board i did earlier

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

i really suggest getting a new OS drive though, nearly all of todays drives have twice the output as the one yooure using.

RealityRipple

Hmm... I suppose that's not overly expensive... I guess I can just get another video card later if I need to... But it says it's 1066 RAM compatible, doesn't say anything about 800... Did you overlook that, or is it backwards compatible?
In a choice between a twelve dollar adapter and an entire new hard drive when nothing's wrong with the one I have, I'll take the adapter. But thanks.

kris23

you dont know that all DDR2 standards are backwards compatible? any standard of DDR2 can work on any DDR2 board, you can install DDR2 1200 memory on a DDR2 667 board and it will run, just takes alot more tweaking to do. and you can stick DDR2 800 in a DDR2 1066 board, it will automatically be detected as such.

if i may share my opinion, i think your frugality is bordering on excessive.......

trust me, you want to have as few points of failure as possible, a IDE to SATA converter is just that, a possible point of failure, and knowing how such converters behave, i wouldnt load my OS on one...... tried it..... its the same as loading your OS on an external drive and expecting it to run flawlessly, probably is never gonna happen.

i skimped on parts in my system..... now im paying for it, lost a 2pg report an hour ago because of system instability.... its a hardware issue, i got junk RAM and a crappy PSU, it was alot worse with an old HDD..... long removed

so i HIGHLY recommend getting system components that are good and have the least amount of conversions involved..... more complex something is, the more likely an error will occur. thats why no one recommends a RAID 0 array for stability and safety...

you are welcome to use the adapter and you may be lucky but i really suggest not doing it for the sake of stability.... ive done it and i just dont think its worth it, especially if you have precious data on the drive.....

RealityRipple

If it becomes a problem, I can switch, and use the adapter to make copying over easy. And no, I know nothing about DDR2 or DDR3's details. I've been out of the hardware loop for about five years.

About that motherboard... I have a front headphone and mic jack, two front USB ports, a front Firewire port, I need an audio in port in the back for my TV tuner card, and my stereo system is 5.1. I can't tell from the description, nor the pictures, whether it'll support everything (except the Firewire doesn't really matter).

kris23

yea the adapter really was meant for non critical tasks like storage

as for sound, the onboard audio chip is 7.1 so it should work wiith your speakers well, there are enough USB headers for anything you need to plug for more ports and nearly all mobos ive seen has 2 connectors for sound but i never needed them

RealityRipple

Alright, found a full list AND better pictures on the manufacturer's page (here), so that's all great.

Thank you very much for your input. This'll be a lot cheaper than I expected.

kris23

that system should serve you well, just be sure to stress test it every week for the 30 days to make sure there are no bad parts, its pretty common with new computers.