[in10sive]

Hi I am hoping you guys can help me with some advice.

I have an AMD Sempron 2800+ ,Radeon X800XT PE AGP and 3X 512meg DDR 400 ram.
I want to upgrade my mobo but don't know what would be a good choice performance wise,price is not much of an issue here.
It must have at least 3 DIMM slots and at least one serial port as my UPS uses one.
I like to keep upto date with all the latest products but unfortunatly I don't do that with motherboards as it does not need to be upgraded that often.
I would't have to now but after checking the mobo book I discovered my current board only supports up to 266 ram so I am losing out on performance.

So can anyone tell me what would would be good for my current setup?

Thanks in advance.

[jasonbourne]

The Problem Is That U Have Agp Video Card And A Sempron Processor.maybe U Should Think About Selling Ur Stuff On Ebay And Get A Pci Express Motherboard With 939 Sockete.

[Yousaif]

Try checking the mobo out in my sig.

[in10sive]

Selling on ebay is not that good an option as I will lose quite a bit of money on the deal.

Yousaif youre board looks like it might be the one to get,after checking the abit site it looks like it has 3 DIMM slots but it makes no mention of serial ports on the back which is somthing I must have.

[Matth]

If you have legacy serial devices, some (not all) will work acceptably over Serial to USB converters.

One review for the Abit NF7-S V2 puts it as being equipped with 2 serial and 1 parallel.

If you want performance, and don't want to replace that overpowered AGP graphics card, then I'd suggest going to a Socket 754 Athlon "754, am I mad?!" - well, the motherboards tend to be cheaper, the chips tend to be cheaper, and it seems both will be phased out for a new socket ... and by the time that gets interesting, it won't be available with AGP, so it's a solution for NOW, not for later - and you won't get dual channel advantages with 3 DIMMs.

If the current motherboard only supports 266 RAM, is it running the Sempron at full speed (I thought they were 333FSB).

A mammoth graphics, and a weedy Sempron CPU (the 2800+ Sempron is a step or 2 back from a 2800+ Athlon, as they changed the point of reference) - seems a bit of a mismatch, though some things are more dependent on GPU horsepower than CPU.

[Zelig]

Some of the Semprons can overclock massively though. (~1 GHz)

[in10sive]

Well I guess I will look into getting an Athlon 64 chip and board even though I have no problems running games at full spec with my "weedy" chip a short term solution is no good.
if I am going to spend the money i want to see it in my benchmarks.

[Lowfat]

You never said if the chip was a Socket A or 754 sempron....

IF Socket A, my vote goes for the DFI Ultra Infinity NF2 board. It takes a lot of time to set up correctly and working well. but it is by far the best Socket A board for overclocking.

[in10sive]

It is socket A but that is all irrelevent now as it is clearly not worht it so I have decided to get the Athlone 64,earlier than I had planned as I had hoped to wait a while till they made a faster chip.
Anyway the Chaintech S1689 seems to cover all my needs,i just hope it has decent performance.

[Matth]

Well heatsinked and overclocked (on a board capable of taking it from 333 to 400FSB) , ths SoA Sempron woul be quite a beast.

The case FOR a Socket A Motherboard upgrade - it's the cheapest option, and it would certainly match an AGP card that would be looking less than exciting within a year - given the price of even pretty good SoA boards, it could provide a small kick for a mall price, and serve as a stopgap, though the future of 64bit+AGP looks shaky for later - I suppose they's still be making 64 bit motherboards with AGP chipsets for a while, but I doubt that any new AMD socket boards will arrive as anything other than PCI-E.


With 20:20 hindsight, and the progress of PCI-E as a graphics platform if nothing else, they didn't really do anyone any favours by bringing the Radeon X-series to AGP - a powerful card for a dying platform.

Funny, I'd expected myself to be backing AGP for longer - but only to a degree - heck, there are still people putting powerful graphics on PCI - and while PCI-E is not the huge power boost that AGP is over PCI, PCI-E is where all the power will soon be going.

[in10sive]

The sad thing is I bought the AGP card only to hear about PCI a few weeks later.
Re selling the card would have resulted in a loss of money and the expense of changing my mobo which I could not afford at the time as i was saving up for a deposit on a new car.
Thems the breaks.

[Matth]

The only certainty in computing, is that there will NEVER be a good time to buy anything, since it will either get cheaper, or be superceded.

So what is the deal with the motherboard you have?
A Sempron 2800+ is a 333FSB processor and if the motherboard is only 266, it won't be full speed - unless it's ... no, the previous Athlon 2800+ was a 333 as well.

If the current setup under-runs the CPU by 20%, then the kick from a new socket A board would be well worth having - never seen any boards that run the FSB higher than the maximum for the RAM, not without extreme overclocking settings

[brutusmaximus]

id go for an asus motherboard in your price range. they generally are the best built IMO.

[waterloo]

SIS 741GX-M Budge Board. Works Nicely.
DFI NF2 Mobo?
MSI Delta 2 ?