New Motherboard Question

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Cynnie

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Ok so i am upgrading SLI 9800 gts to a gtx285 and i didn't realize until a few minutes ago that the gtx would work in my PCIx 1.0 slots with no noticeable effect on performance (apparently GPU technology hasn't caught up to PCIx 2.0 yet) well this was news to me.

So i already ordered a new motherboard along with the card that's compatible with my existing CPU and RAM, but my question to the gurus is: is it worth the trouble of swapping out the motherboards? I'm only out about $100 so its no big deal if i keep it or not.

My existing motherboard is a Dell XPS stock 0PP150 A00 motherboard seen here.
The board that i just ordered is an ASUS P5N-D seen here.
 
Reasons not to keep the new mobo:
- You're out $100
- You'll need to reinstall drivers
- Probably need to reinstall the OS (so there's all the backing up etc.)
- If the OS is Windows, you'll need to re-activate it over the phone for the new motherboard
- You don't actually need it, since the old one works fine (I presume)
Reasons to keep it
- It's a good-quality 'board, meaning it will last a long time (I used to have the exact same one, it was my first one too)
- New features, i.e. overclocking, which the old board wouldn't have
- More up-to-date specs, such as the aforementioned PCI-E 2.0 which leaves the thing more future-proof than the Dell one (new cards such as HD5970 are slowed by PCI-E 1.0)
- The new board will have a good warranty, probably longer than the Dell's, so you're extending the life of the system that way

Pick and choose which of these matter to you, and hopefully that'll help you decide whether to keep it or send it back. There's probably many reasons I've missed out, though that seems complete enough.
 
Why would i have to reinstall the OS? I've swapped motherboards before and never had to reinstall the OS.
 
That's true - I'm used to switching to a completely different socket and such. Since everything else is the same, you're right, no reinstall needed.
 
Well there's very few games i play (the ones i do play , i play a lot) But none of them use physx, i think they are all havok. So i guess there's really no point in doing that.
 
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