You reckon this is a worthy upgrade??

[Ethereal_Dragon]

IMO, I wouldn't waste the money.... I would put that $200 towards the 'better build' you have in your sig, or a second monitor to utilize that planned Tri-SLI....

ASRock motherboards are at the budget end of the spectrum. I personally would go with someone of a little more quality. Gigabyte for example.

When you re-installed Windows, did you FORMAT the drive, and do a FRESH install, or did you just re-install it again over what was already there.

When you upgraded the graphics drivers, did you un-install the old ones, and use a driver cleaner software to fully remove them, and install the new ones?

 

[ShaolinDreams]

so you reckon its gonna be worse then my current P4P800SE socket 478?

I always full format man. Yep i did that also with the graphics drivers. I got this Gainward bliss 7800GS 2 years after the other components so its the newest part of my system. I know its not the wisest thing to do but im 80% sure this upgrade its gonna work to a degree. Im not wanting this pc to be uber uber... if i see someone playing FEAR on medium with a 9800pro.. something is wrong here. The performance is round about the same whatever i do! fresh format, stock, with tweaks.


Thing is i got £200 to "waste" on an improvement.. give me a little more juice so i can run some older games reasonably smooth. im not worried about saving the money for better build, thats coming anyway with 200 saved or not.

are there any other motherboards that are good and agp other than asrock that are reasonably cheap? from what ive researched the Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (Socket 775) motherboard seem ok with mid level performance (which i believe is much better then what im getting now) reviews are generally positive to moderate.

if i get a "good" motherboard.. it goes over my budget. Dont you think generally with the E6600 and ddr2 my shiz will be running better in games definately windows desktop. the cpu i got struggles with just HT, even AMD is better then my Intel.. lol

 

[ShaolinDreams]

Update

Ok Ive decided to go with it.

Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Motheboard = £40 - Ebuyer.com
2gb Crucial Ballistix 6400 = £58 - Crucial.com
Intel Core2Duo E6600 2.40GHz = £50 - a friend .com

also realised my sata2 harddrive is gonna be used to its full potential, as current Asus P4P800SE mobo only reads it as sata1 speed. Twice as fast! thats a bonus.

If all else fails i can simply ditch the mobo and keep the Good CPU & Ram!

Building hopefully during the week, ill let you know how i get on.

Back to burning backup DVDs