GA-MA69VM-S2 build

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jabberwocky

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Hello

I'm considering on upgrading my system, and rather than buying everything, I'm trying to build off of what I have.

When I bought this mother board, I intended to use it so I can add new upgrades over a 3 year period. I'm at the end of this time frame now so I'm looking to see what I can do.

My current board: GA-MA69VM-S2

I think the best I can do for RAM on this is DDR2 800, possibly this G.Skill at Newegg. I would plan to go to 4Gb total. Currently I have 2gigs of DDR2 666.

My Processor is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ @ 2700MHz, and I'm at a loss as to what processor I should consider, if any. I have a pretty big list to choose from.

I may just want to overclock what I currently have or maybe go with something new? I dunno. This overclocking though is related to another issue.

I have a NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT currently, and it's been ok. Recently in trying the new Crysis 2 demo, the video card overheats in about 10 min, and crashes. In anticipation to Battlefield 3, or Skyrim later this year, I'm thinking of going with something more powerful, but that has a better cooling option. OR do I look for better cooling options now for my current card? I'm not even sure what is available.

Doing some benchmarking, I seem to have a bottle neck somewhere, I think it's a combination of RAM and possible the video card. With PC-Wizard 2010, my Global Performance is scoring 5.5 out of 7.9

My goal is to get as much as I can out of the life cycle of this board, but I wonder if I'm a bit behind the curve on this one.

I have priced out a nice new everything system for under $600 so there is that option as well.

Any advice would be appreciated!
 
what's your budget for an upgrade?

and you're not too bad off with the board because you can put an am3 cpu in it which will definitely help out. That and a new GPU will help you through the next couple of years without much of an issue, just depends on how much you wanna spend. And if you do it right you can pretty much set yourself up to just upgrade the motherboard, add a GPU and get new ram and be right back in the game in a year or two and set yourself up for another 2-3 years of solid gaming performance.
 
Howdy,

Thanks for the reply. I'm hoping to stick around $300-$400 I think. Less if I can. I'm not sure what the AM3 is, could you provide a link so I can have a look?

I think the RAM will be at it's end here, but that is ok. It's not too expensive and if I can get a few years out of it, I'll be happy. So in a few years I can upgrade the motherboard, switch over the old GPU and processor perhaps, and squeeze more time off that before I upgrade those again.
 
AM3 is the newest AMD processors, most of the processors on that giant cpu compatibility chart are AM3 processors. I think 300 is definitely a workable budget for a nice upgrade if you just want to upgrade the processor, gpu and add some ram.
ATI 5770 - $110: Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100283VX-2L Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/ Eyefinity
AMD Phenom II x4 955 - $140: Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ955FBGMBOX

The card is 110 after MIR but even then you're up to $310 including ram and you get a nice DirectX 11 card and a quad core processor, and with both of those you can just put those into a new motherboard, maybe one with crossfire and put a second 5770 in there and you'll be set for a number of years.

What's your current power supply? An upgraded PSU and GPU are going to use up a larger amount of power and I'd hate to recommend something and have you buy it and put it in only for it to not work or fry your components because the PSU is under powered.
 
I'm not exactly sure what the power supply is...It's an Enermax Pro 82+. The case is blocking the details, but I think it was at least over 525w. When I bought it, I remember thinking of going above and beyond what my current power requirements were at the time.

Thanks for the input. I think I'll pull my case apart to check out the power supply to make sure it's good to go.

Cheers
 
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