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Need advice upgrading motherboard / gfx card
My motherboard is currently out and I plan on replacing it but not sure what to choose.
The one I have is 5 years old and is out of date but not sure what's compatible.
current graphics card is a ATI Radeon 5850 hd so looking for a board to support this and room to upgrade.
current MB is http://www.pc-specs.com/mobo/Asus/Asus_P6T_SE_/60
Thanks for any help
Comments
Any current motherboard will support your graphic card. Your ram must be DDR3, which is supported by nearly all modern motherboards. That motherboard seems to have old IDE port, which can be used to connect hard disks, DVD drives, and other mass media. You'll have to check if it's used before buying a new motherboard because modern motherboards don't have IDE ports any more, they use SATA instead. It's likely that your IDE port isn't used, but check before upgrading or you'll risk not being able to connect some of your devices.
With all that said, none will be able to give you any good upgrade advice before you tell: What are you planning to do about processor? Do you want to keep your current processor, or buy a new one? If you plan to buy a new processor, what processor?
The motherboard is completely out is why I'm replacing it.. I still plan on keeping same CPU
it is a 3.33ghz i7
In that case, look for used LGA 1366 motherboard. Afaik they don't make any motherboards that would have LGA 1366 socket any more, so buying second hand is the only option.
Just pick any ATX form factor motherboard with LGA 1366 socket that has enough RAM slots and all the connectors you need. As long as you don't overclock, speed differences between motherboards are small, but when trying to buy a used motherboard like this the price differences can be large so don't be too picky just take the cheapest that works.
Don't worry about upgrading your Radeon 5850HD too much. As long as the motherboard has PCI-E 16x slot, it'll support any (single) modern graphic card, and you'd be hard pressed to find a motherboard that wouldn't have PCI-E 16x slot. As long as your power supply has enough power, you'll be able to upgrade the graphic card if you want. Much more limiting in upgrades will be that your processor is already close to fastest LGA 1366 processor available, if you ever want to do a larger upgrade and upgrade processor too then you'll need to buy another motherboard.
1366 motherboards are rare, but available. Your looking in the $250-300+ range though - and at that range you could just about get a new Z97 with a Core i5 and still reuse all the older equipment you had before (save maybe a DIMM or two, because of the drop from triple channel to dual channel)
You might get lucky on Ebay/Craigslist or local classifieds, Caveat Emptor though.
If it were me, I would sell your CPU on ebay, and buy something like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-FX-8350-EIGHT-CORE-4-2GHz-CPU-ASROCK-SATA6-USB3-DVI-DDR3-AM3-Motherboard-/111178335921?pt=Motherboards&hash=item19e2bec6b1.
You can could get it even cheaper if you looked enough. Or as stated a i5 2nd or 3rd gen. If you do more then gaming, go with the 8350. If your just doing gaming go with the i5. If your just doing gaming, you really dont have to go with a i5 or a 8350, the 5850 would be fine with a old school phenom black, or amd fx 6 core, which you could get a mb and cpu for around 100 bucks.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-M5A78L-M-LX-PLUS-AMD-FX6300-4-1-3-5GHz-Six-Core-Motherboard-CPU-Combo-/111434470471?pt=US_Motherboard_CPU_Combos&hash=item19f2031447 thats 165
That would be way more then enough for any modern game, unless your trying to do high res. I have a i5 3570 and a 5870 and i can play all modern games on ultra between 40-60fps. my friend has the same set up, but he uses this processor, http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-AMD-Phenom-II-X6-1045T-2-7-3-2-GHz-Six-Core-OEM-Tray-HDT45TWFK6DGR-/321506910397?pt=CPUs&hash=item4adb4e20bd, and we have the same fps, i mean if you could ms and like 2 3 fps then maybe there is a difference.
I don't exactly understand what you mean by "out". But if it's dead, you should rather sell your current cpu and look in the direction of LGA 2011. If your current MB isn't dead you should just stick with it. Because all you could find are used boards anyway. Which holds the risk ofc.
And since 1366 isn't made anymore the next time you want to upgrade you will have to get a new cpu anyway.
Though i don't know which i7 you own, most likely you want significant perfomance upgrade if the time comes.
So now you'd invest in a "new" board, then the next time you will have to again.
But tbh, no one knows how long this socket will last. As 1366 was around for only 4 years.
I own one i7 920 with GB-EX58, and it's prety much like overkill for any game i play.
So i probably keep it for untill it dies.