Good PCI Express card for Asrock 939dual SataII ?

Hey guys im looking to upgrade my rig one last time before i go all out on a new machine. Im looking to just upgrade my video card but im wondering what cards work the best with this machine. Right now i got my old 5200agp in and i need something faster. I do remember i tried a tiny little 6200 (PCI ExpresS) but i couldnt get it to work no matter what. So im just wondering what People are using out there. Also im considering (if it will work) something like a 8600 or 8800GT. Now i only have a crappy 450watt PSU but i dont have much in the case... 1 Sata drive and 1 IDE CDRom....I also have my CPU (3000+) Jacked to 2.65~

If anyone can post what Video card they have with this board (PCI Express please) That would be great!!

Kind regards
Eddy

Well first of all a 450w PSU should be able to support something like an 8600 and possibly an 8800GT but no guarentees. You're CPU specs are a little odd because it's impossible to run a 2.65 vcore, you might want to look around in the bios or use cpu-z to find a more accurate reading. It should be around 1.3 - 1.4v.

As for the card upgrade... If you have an AGP card in that motherboard right now it's unheard of to also have a pci-express slot, they typically come with one or the other. If you can post the exact model of your motherboard it would be easier to confirm what you're working with. Also, what kind of gaming are you trying to do? That'll make it easier to pick out a card.

oh no i ment 2.65ghz lol from around 2 or 2.2ghz what ever stock is..Vcore is 1.4v i think..what ever stock is like before..All i did was raise the HT to 265

I actually have a Asrock 939Dual SataII...it supports AGP and PCI Express so im going to ditch the older AGP card and get a PCI Express.

As far as gaming goes...It might seem funny but all i play is CS 1.6 but the main reason is im going to be doing alot more modeling in the coming months using 3dsm so i need something faster to render out my scenes. But i suppose ill be playing some decent games on low.. I dont like the huge resolutions or anything.

Ah ok that make a bit more sense lol, yeah that's fine. I looked around for that mobo and that's pretty cool... I've never seen one support AGP4x/8x and PCI-E. It's interesting that you weren't able to get a 6200 to work "no matter what"... I'm sorry that I can't speak from experience with this board but my suggestion would be to make sure you know the card works in the first place (in another machine or something), plug it in and remove any other video cards, maybe look in the bios while the AGP card is in and see if there are any settings to make the primary card PCI-E instead of AGP.

Some other things to be concerned with are how much RAM do you have? You'll probably want to be working with at least 1GB. Also, what model PSU? I have a friend who runs an 8600GT on a Antec 400w.

A good quality 380W psu will run a quad and a 8800GTX, although a low quality unit would fail to power a 8400GS and a single core.

yeah its like a 450W from a local PC shop here in town...I know its nothing hard core or anything.

Yeah right now i have only 1GB of Ballistix installed...probally going to get another GB Which brings me to a quick question...What if i get another dual channel kit (say Two 1GB or two 512mb) will the total system still be dual channel even tho the batch numbers are different on the two sets of ram? (Right now i have 2 banks remaining)

As things are looking im most likely going to get "EVGA E-GEFORCE 9600GT Superclocked 675MHZ 512MB 1.8GHZ DDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI-I HDTV Out Video Card" This looks pretty good for like 160$~ just want to make sure my Power supply can handle it and do i have the correct pins? (As im assuming it takes an external power connector on the card).

Ok well theres another 10 questions fired at ya pretty quick hahah

Just wanted to say thanks for the great forums and help guys!

- Eddy

I wouldn't put anything more than nothing with that psu, replacing the PSU should be your highest priority.

JamesXP said:

I wouldn't put anything more than nothing with that psu, replacing the PSU should be your highest priority.

Click to expand...

I cuncur!

Dual channel works in pairs, unfortunately that doesn't mean ram can't be moody. You should be able to add another pair to your existing setup just fine. You might run into a problem with your setup with 4 sticks though. I had an old AMD 3000+ that simply would not run under DDR 400mhz with 4 sticks. It insisted on clocking all of the sticks down to 333mhz. Whether that was the motherboard or the processor I'm not sure but that's just my experience.

The 9600GT is definitely a nice card at a good price, you should be happy if you go with that. The superclocked stuff isn't really worth it though, it's like $10-$15 more for a factory overclock. I don't think you'll see that much of a difference if you just went with a standard EVGA 9600GT. The card itself requires a 6 pin connector, if you don't have that then you can always used the 4-pin molex adapter that comes with the card and you should be fine. You should be prepared to buy a new PSU though if you start experiencing issues under full load where the system starts restarting/acting quirky, in which case I'd suggest something in the Corsair brand at 500w or higher.

eddyg519 said:

Hey guys im looking to upgrade my rig one last time before i go all out on a new machine. Im looking to just upgrade my video card but im wondering what cards work the best with this machine. Right now i got my old 5200agp in and i need something faster. I do remember i tried a tiny little 6200 (PCI ExpresS) but i couldnt get it to work no matter what. So im just wondering what People are using out there. Also im considering (if it will work) something like a 8600 or 8800GT. Now i only have a crappy 450watt PSU but i dont have much in the case... 1 Sata drive and 1 IDE CDRom....I also have my CPU (3000+) Jacked to 2.65~

If anyone can post what Video card they have with this board (PCI Express please) That would be great!!

Kind regards
Eddy

Click to expand...

I have a Radeon 2400Pro installed in mine (it's serving HTPC duties only right now)...works great!

JamesXP said:

I wouldn't put anything more than nothing with that psu, replacing the PSU should be your highest priority.

Click to expand...

I have a generic FANLESS 350W PSU powering mine. I have a Opty 165 @2.4GHz, the video card, 2GB RAM, a GbE PCI card, a dedicated sound card (PCI),
a 160GB HDD, and 3 120mm fans.....it's been running 24/7 for the last year and a half with no problems.....

In my gaming rig, I have a Q6600 at 3.6GHz, an 8800GTX, 8GB RAM, and 5 HDDs running 24/7 with only a 500W PSU (Enermax Liberty series). The need for more power is WAY OVERRATED!

no problems yet.


Your liberty will poof soon enough, the Liberties died alot, they generally went out with a spark, and I'm not kidding here.


And Yes I agree with the need for more power is overrated, but the need for quality power is underrated at times.



J.

JamesXP said:

no problems yet.


Your liberty will poof soon enough, the Liberties died alot, they generally went out with a spark, and I'm not kidding here.


And Yes I agree with the need for more power is overrated, but the need for quality power is underrated at times.



J.

Click to expand...

The 620W Liberty was the one with all the problems, the 400 & 500W versions were much better. I've been using it in this rig about 8 months now.

450W from a local PC shop here in town

Click to expand...

need for more power is overrated

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True, but the odds are probably pretty good that most of that is amps on the 5v lines. Likely minimal on the 12.

eddyg519: Can you take a look at the side of your PSU, it should have a rating chart which will tell the rated 12v amperage. Do you mind posting that, and maybe the manufacturer? This will better be able to gauge what kind of card you can run on the PSU.