Switching from AGP....

Overheal

Its been 3 years, and after spending 800 in total on this machine between cost and upgrades (and a disgustingly stupid delivery charge to get it out of the states....*shudder*) Its approaching time in the next year to get rid of this ol' AGP clunker.

Im thinking that I would like to upgrade it part by part; the diffivulty of that being you nearly have to swap the GPU, CPU, and MoBo all at the same time...

I suppose I'm just looking for suggestions on a new Motherboard/processor combo that I will be happy with for the next 5(+) years.

Right now:

-AMD something....its a 468/478/4-something socket...thing. 1.7ghz
-40gb HDD
-the motherboard...is expendable. an Asus something or other. Reliable AGP 2x with 5 pci slots
-AGP 8x GeForce FX 5500 (new)
-SATA controller
-USB2.0 Controller
-Ethernet Card
-Modem card....(laughs)
-PSU 450W...getting kinda noisy...

Anyway I don't mind splashing out for a Mobo...but I also don't need to be selling my left kidney. I was thinking somewhere in line of €350. The processor if I need to switch sockets altogether should naturally be orgasmic...but again I dont have a third kidney to spare; I'd honestly be happy with a few pegs up from where I am.

8T8

It is possible to get boards that have AGP & PCI-e support giving you an upgrade path in the future for PCI-Express graphics cards

That board has DDR/DDR-2 + AGP/PCI-e & supports Core 2 Duo CPU's so you can transition at your own pace. It also comes with integrated HD audio and ethernet controller so you can do away with PCI cards if you want.

Best CPU option is Core 2 Duo E4300 for €155.

Here is the Asrock board on Dabs going for €68 so you have money left over.

That extra cash I would recommend putting towards either new RAM like 1GB of DDR-2 if you already don't have it or a new fast HD.

That would be a significant step up over your current system at least for the CPU.

Overheal

I do enjoy the cost of the board very much, but..
what confuses me here though is the RAM: 2x dual channels (4 slots): 1 dual channel can do DDR II up to 667Mhz; the other can only do DDR (not DDR II) 400Mhz??? grand, each only has a 2gb capacity (total 4gb -I suspect I wont be splashing out on more than that for a good while...)
I suspect the backwards compatability of that though is the whole idea (being able to use my old RAM) but won't that significantly slow down my clock-speeds??
I will be looking to upgrade the RAM though: at the moment I've got 3x256.

Liking the overclocking tools though..and the other strength of this board being is Vista-64 bit compatability and its Quad Core compliance ...not that I'll be splashing out on one of those for a while, either (a grand!!)

EDIT: no idea what speed the PCIe bus is, no?

8T8

The board supports DDR and DDR-2, essentially it has 2 slots for each & not 4 in total as the slots are keyed differently so you can only use one or the other as DDR & DDR-2 are separate standards.

Dual channel mode works by placing two DIMM's in each slot as the board has only two slots for each type of RAM that means you can either go with DDR-2 or DDR.

DDR tops out at 400Mhz
DDR-2 tops out at 800Mhz though the board only supports up to DDR-2 667Mhz.

The real world performance difference between the two is marginal and if say for instance you already have 1GB of DDR I would not recommend buying 1GB of DDR-2.

The board does not affect the clock speeds of anything, nothing to worry about.

The PCI-e slot is physically x16 so it can accommodate any PCI-e graphics cards but the slot is wired electrically to a 4x connection but that it still more than enough and will not impact your performance in any meaningful way.

TerrorFirmer

I'd replace that clunker of an fx5500 before replacing the cpu, no joke. Worst...card....ever? Apart from it's slightly lower clocked but just as significantly crap sibling, the Fx5200.

Overheal

I find it does my requirements: right now Im finding the CPU is the weaker link. Even if I did upgrade it thats useless on an old 2x bus