View Poll Results: What to do...
- Voters
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$85CDN - Ditch the ECS and by a better S462 board (A7N8X-X probably)
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$280CDN - ASUS K8N/Sempron 3000+ S754/512MB DDR400 and keep the Radeon 9500Pro
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$725CDN - Find some way to build the S939 system I actually want (won't happen)
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$0 - keep saving those pennies
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New System (only minor upgrade tho)
I'm currently running an Athlon XP 2100+ w/ 512MB DDR266 and Radeon 9500 Pro on an ECS board. Yes, the board is a POS, but it was free.
Anyway, i'm looking to improve things a little and rid myself of some stability issues with the current setup. I don't have the money to build what I want (just bought a new car last month and dropped $1200 on a new mattress this month), so i'm working with the following options...
This machine is just a general use system with occassional PhotoShop work (I like to snap pictures) and a little gaming (Halo and a friend is pestering me about Battlefield II).
Thanks for the suggestions...
Last edited by rsfnatik; 10-16-2005 at 12:39 AM.
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I'd definatly go for the S939 system, especially if you plan on hanging on to this next upgrade for a little while. If you cannot afford it now, i'd wait until you can. BF2 is a pretty demanding game, as will up many upcoming games like FEAR and Quake 4
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Member
I voted S754 and Sempron 64. That's much better than anything you can do with S462, good enough to buy you time while you save up for the system you really want. I'm guessing the ECS board is the source of your stability problems, though if the RAM and/or power supply are also cheapies, it could be them instead.
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Hmm... shouldn't have included option #4, or should have made it more obvious that it was a joke.
My current system crashes too frequently under load (ie: games, PhotoShop, etc...) so I *must* do something. Whatever I do in the short term will become a second system later on... so buying the S462 board or S754 isn't the end of the world. If I can get another year out of whatever I buy i'll be happy.
I'm going to try to replace the S462 board with something decent (A7N8X or A7V880) and failing that i'll look into the S754 solution.
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Senior Member
Check the memory and possibly increase to 1gb. I'd also look into the drivers you're using for the 9500. And lastly, check the board out for bad caps as it's of the generation where it certainly could have been affected. I think it used the early version of the KM266 northbridge which wasn't too good. Replaced by the KM266A and KM266 Pro.
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The memory runs through memtest without issue and there are no leaking caps on the board. Currently, I have 512MB DDR266 (2x256MB) installed. I can't remember the brand off hand, but it is major brand... like Infineon or Samsung. Not sure how an upgrade to 1GB would improve stability tho...
I've done some work with the drivers for the 9500 Pro but i'm sick of screwing around with it. At this point in time, i'd rather just throw some $$$ at it as i'm convinced that the ECS board is truly garbage (uses SiS chipset...) and that a return to VIA or move to nF2 will be a good thing.
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Senior Member
More memory won't make you more stable but would improve performance.
I hear what you're saying about the Sis chipset. You could try the Asus board you mentioned or an Abit NF7-M. The Abit uses nForce 2 and supports 266 MHz bus.
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Ultimate Member
754 system and save your pennies......
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I find that i'm having a hard time finding someone who still has stock on S462 boards, at least one that i'd be interested in buying. So, S754 may win out in the end simply on the fact that I can still buy the hardware....
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I just went through something like this a month ago.
Picked up a new KT6 DFI from NewEgg and used up some memory and a CPU I had laying around to replace an "old" PII machine for the wife.
Just now looked on pricewatch for that board, NA, but if you look under the nforce 2 boards you can find the MSI boards and I've delt with 3btech before and haven't had a problem. So that may be a way to go to get more stable. Then upgrade to more memory. Done for under hundred bucks, easily.
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