Trying to find a MB with the following

J

jmaravig

New Member
AGP 4X/8X slot
4-5 PCI slots(plus 1 PCE-Express would be nice for the future)
8-10 USB 2.0 ports
2-4 SATA ports
2 IDE

I built my computer over 7 years ago and can't afford to start over from scratch, so I'm trying to find something that will bridge the past with the future. Over the years, I prefer Asus and Abit for reliability and stability, but I'm open to anything you feel is rock solid. I'm hoping to find a board like this and add a processor and just go from there. I did find a 160GB SATA HD which I will use with a new OS, etc. Any guidance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time,
Jeff
 
Only a select few boards have both AGP and PCI Express. They are totally different(as are PCI and PCI Express) The few boards out that do have both aren't true AGP or PCI, so you won't get the performace you'd normally get from PCI Express. I'd also suspect some compatability issues(but maybe not...)
 
Ok, than forget the PCI Express slot. I just got a Nvidia Fx5500 256MB card AGP card within the last year and I'd rather not get another video card so soon. :-)
 
I understand that you wouldnt like to upgrade the grafic's card buuut... it also could be an idea to get a pci-express motherboard and a Ati x300SE, since its significantly better as the Geforce fx, and its pci-e.
going with pci-e would also allow you to have a much bigger choice on the newer motherboards,..
but, what's youre budget for the Motherboard + CPU + RAM? because with your pc build 7 years ago,.. im pretty sure you have to upgrade that ( + probably your power supply :( )
 
Well, you are correct. I'm looking at cases and I figure a 500W power supply would be the minimum. As for the board/cpu combo, I was hoping to stay under $250, if at all possible. I was hoping to use the 512Mb of memory I have and just move it over. Every other component I can move over. My biggest headache is I have many USB devices and only 4 ports currently so I was hoping to double or go to 10. I haven't really researched PCI-E as I don't know what they offer above AGP cards, although I'm guessing it is fairly substantial. How much does a decent PCI-E card go for? I did only pay about $55 for my latest card so I did get a good deal at the time.
 
Pci-e s newer, so if you would want to upgrade to a better card, you'll have much more choice on pci-e cards.
Anyway, for you're pc beeing 7 year's old now.. i think your RAM is either pc100/133 SDRAM or pc133DDR SDRAM,.. now you could put in DDR SDRAM into a s939 motherboard (an AMD 64bit platform.) but you would underclock everything i think. however,.. i think its more than doable for getting a AM2 processor, RAM and a pci-e motherboard with onboard grafices for under $250.

as for pci-e Card's prices,. the 7600GS is a really good card, it outperforms the fx5500 by far, and its between $100 and $120. but, if you get a motherboard with integrated grafic's.. i think its better as the fx5500 already.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131042
this is an Asus motherboard with integrated Nvidia Geforce 6100 grafic's and onboard sound now, it only has 4 unboard USB ports.
but its $82.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819104301 Processor for $40
and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820144165
a 512Mb RAM stick for $58.99

total: 181.98.
but with this setup, you could add something like
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815104264
since it would use a pci-e x1 slot ( pci-e x16 is for rafic's cards), you would have 3 normal PCI slots available.
however,.. this motherboard only has 1 IDE port,.. so if you are using a IDE harddisk and 2 IDE optical's,.. you would have a problem with it, but if you are using only 1 optical, it would with the HD and the optical connected on that port.
 
That looks like a good setup. It looks like it has onboard expansion for up to 10 USB ports total. I think I read that right. The only problem is I have 5 IDE devices so 1 may be an issue. I did just pickup a 160GB SATA drive so I could eventually move everything over. That will be a very tedious task. The second issue is my AGP card has a DVI output which I use for my flat screen. Is that a standard on newer PCI-E cards? Thanks for all your help so far, I really appreciate it!
 
What do you think of the Asus A8N32-SLI, M2V K8T890, or A8R32-MVP boards, if you've ever dealt with them? Maybe a Gigabyte GA-K8N could work? For PCI-E cards, I'm looking at an ATI-Radeon x700 Pro 256. I'm a console gamer, not a PC one, so I don't need a very high end card, but would like something that looks good and is realtively fast. I hate when the screen paints slowly :-)
 
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