A good idea to get this motherboard

[jfri 42]

I have seen an Asrock motherboard out for salehttp://www.tradera.com/auction/auction.aspx?aid=90129414With it I could use my current S939 AMD 64 4000+ CPU and 2 Gb DDR400 RAM (and initially my old AGP videocard). It would give me two upgrade options which I don't have with my current setup1) I can use PCIe videocard and for example trying to find a 8800 or 98002) It supports SATAII so I could use a bigger newer Seagate 7200.11 hdQuestion is this something that could give any clear increase in performence? I'm thinking about 1) in the first place.My current system isMobo Asus A8N S939 Deluxe AGP SATAIAMD 64 4000+2 Gb DDR400 RAMNVIDIA 7950GT 512M DDR3 AGPWD Raptor 150 Gb SATAI 10000 rpm (with Win XP Home FS9 and FSX filled to slightly more than 50%)Seagate 250 GB IDE 7200 rpm (other stuff)

[Guest Se7en]

I have seen an Asrock motherboard out for salehttp://www.tradera.com/auction/auction.aspx?aid=90129414With it I could use my current S939 AMD 64 4000+ CPU and 2 Gb DDR400 RAM (and initially my old AGP videocard). It would give me two upgrade options which I don't have with my current setup1) I can use PCIe videocard and for example trying to find a 8800 or 98002) It supports SATAII so I could use a bigger newer Seagate 7200.11 hdQuestion is this something that could give any clear increase in performence? I'm thinking about 1) in the first place.My current system isMobo Asus A8N S939 Deluxe AGP SATAIAMD 64 4000+2 Gb DDR400 RAMNVIDIA 7950GT 512M DDR3 AGPWD Raptor 150 Gb SATAI 10000 rpm (with Win XP Home FS9 and FSX filled to slightly more than 50%)Seagate 250 GB IDE 7200 rpm (other stuff)

The Asrock boards are OK and make a good stepping stone from AGP to PCI-E graphic cards, dont expect any performance increase though, also the overclocking capability's are limited on these boards and you wont get any performance gain in FSX or FS9 with a graphic card upgrade, both of these sims are mainly CPU limited.Ultimatly you probably should be looking at an Intel I7 or slightly older C2D Quad or fast dual core like the E88** series that coupled with a good mainboard and ram will overclock very well.But if its just to make the transition from AGP to PCI-E graphics that you will use in a future build, why not.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Also these hybrid boards have crippled AGP performance since the AGP bus is piggy-backed off of the PCI bus so you may even see an initial performance drop. Your single core A64 is getting to be quite long in the tooth. I think you're better off saving your money for a bit and getting a new system.

[jfri 42]

The Asrock boards are OK and make a good stepping stone from AGP to PCI-E graphic cards, dont expect any performance increase though, also the overclocking capability's are limited on these boards and you wont get any performance gain in FSX or FS9 with a graphic card upgrade, both of these sims are mainly CPU limited.Ultimatly you probably should be looking at an Intel I7 or slightly older C2D Quad or fast dual core like the E88** series that coupled with a good mainboard and ram will overclock very well.But if its just to make the transition from AGP to PCI-E graphics that you will use in a future build, why not.

The whole point with a AGP PCIe transition is that things should improve in some way. Apart from pure raw fps or smoothness improvements I'm also thinking about curing different graphical glitches in FSX. For example sometimes the outside view get black in FSX and also with SP2 I saw spikes in the scenery. Other has reported similary problems with older hardware. Maybe the more modern PCIe with a more powerful videocard could solve this?Regarding FS being CPU bound I have made three upgrades1) 6600GT 256M DDR3 to 7950GT 512M DDR32) AMD 64 3200+ to AMD 64 4000+3) 1 GB to 2 Gb RAMMy experience was that of these 1) made the biggest difference even though I did notice an improvement from 2). 2 Gb RAM was only noticed in FSX i.e less stutter due to harddrive access. In other games like Oblivion I only noticed improvements from 1) but here the improvements was bigger compared to FS9.

Also these hybrid boards have crippled AGP performance since the AGP bus is piggy-backed off of the PCI bus so you may even see an initial performance drop. Your single core A64 is getting to be quite long in the tooth. I think you're better off saving your money for a bit and getting a new system.

If so I think I pass this option since I initially would need to use my 7950 AGP card