PCI-Express Mobo

A friend of mine is looking to update his pc, right now he's just gonna go for a new mobo. His current specs are as follows:

Some Dell Mobo
1.8Ghz P4
256mb Ram (this other 512mb went fucko a few days ago)
9200 Ati

He's looking to spend about 200 Canadian, and is looking for a good mobo that:

Has 4 Ram Slots
PCI-Express, AGP and Standard PCI
Will support his 1.8Ghz P4 and will allow for upgrades (kinda up to about 3.2Ghz)

He wants to be able to use his 9200 for a bit on the new mobo then he's gonna switch over to a X600XT (either that or a 9800 Pro which one is better in terms of gaming?)

Any ideas?

Have you looked on tigerdirect.ca? or ncix.com/ca not sure what it is lol

His options are severely limited by the requirement for both PCI-e AND agp.
I have seen such a board, but never even considered it a viable option.

woah woah woah, do AGP and PCI-Express on one board exist?

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Originally Posted by Monkeee

woah woah woah, do AGP and PCI-Express on one board exist?

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I am the freind. Yeah they do exist, all though they all seem to either have like 2 PCI slots, or only two Ram slots, or someother reason why they will not work for me. Does not make a whole lot of sense to me, to just abandon AGP, I mean when a PCI express card fails it will be nice to be able to go back to the old agp card. Does that no make sense?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by toddiscool

I am the freind. Yeah they do exist, all though they all seem to either have like 2 PCI slots, or only two Ram slots, or someother reason why they will not work for me. Does not make a whole lot of sense to me, to just abandon AGP, I mean when a PCI express card fails it will be nice to be able to go back to the old agp card. Does that no make sense?

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Both ATI and Nvidia have already put more than enough money into PCI-E and its supposedly cheaper to produce and has a far higher bandwith limit. So basically it would be like people dropping AGP graphics card's and going back to PCI Standard, even though PCI Standard is used for modems, audio cards and other things because of the small ammounts of data that can be pushed through it each second it's alot slower.

Lets all drop the computer, typewriter is much better :P

AFAIK only the Via PT880 Pro chipset supports both AGP and PCI-E. That's also an LGA-775 chipset, so I'm not sure if it would support existing P4 sockets, or at least whether anyone would bother to make a board which does.

So far I haven't been able to find a single board which supports both, so if you've found one with 2 standard PCI slots you've done well. However, I suspect you've simply found a full PCI Express board, the long slot being the PCI-E x16 graphics slot, not an AGP slot.

is this what you are seeking? http://www.asrock.com/news/P4Dual-91...Dual-915GL.htm

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Originally Posted by kazaa2002

is this what you are seeking? http://www.asrock.com/news/P4Dual-91...Dual-915GL.htm

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It isn't in production yet (or at any rate hasn't been released). Note that the "AGI Express" interface is only PCI-E x4, not x16, so it doesn't run any faster than AGPx8. This is hardly surprising since the Intel 915 chipset doesn't really support AGP, so probably the only way they can do it is by limiting the PCI-E side. Also there are only 2 ram slots and 2 PCI slots on the ones shown.

However, the lower pics on this page are the VIA PT880PRO based boards, which should give full speed PCI-E. They appear to show 4 pci slots and possibly (though it isn't clear) 4 ram slots.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...136-150&DEPA=0

That is one, I tink anyways about 10 minutes of looking at this stuff I start to go blind. But anyways, it does seem as though you guys are right. I cant find any practical solutions, and I guess that it is not the ned of thw world. Just means that I have to buy my MOBO and Vid card at the same time, which does suck because new Processor, and alot more ram was something that I was more concerned about.

I hate computers.

thanks guys.

I remember earing somewhere that isn't PCI-Express and PCI-X different things.

If you cannot find a AGP and PCI-Express board then why not buy the graphics card and CPU with money now and wait untill you have more money to buy the motherboard, that was as soon as you get the mobo you can just borrow your old ram for a bit but use your new CPU and Video card. Then as more money starts coming in upgrade your ram to 1GB or 2GB, also get a Dvd-/+rw while your at it :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by toddiscool

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...136-150&DEPA=0

That is one, I tink anyways about 10 minutes of looking at this stuff I start to go blind. But anyways, it does seem as though you guys are right. I cant find any practical solutions, and I guess that it is not the ned of thw world. Just means that I have to buy my MOBO and Vid card at the same time, which does suck because new Processor, and alot more ram was something that I was more concerned about.

I hate computers.

thanks guys.

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DO NOT buy that board, it won't do what you want.

PCI-X was a crappy idea dreamt up by HP, IBM and Compaq. It actually made things more complicated than the conventional PCI. It was supposedly faster but backwards compatible, but as soon as you introduced a single PCI card the whole bus dropped to the speed of the slowest device.

With PCI-E each device has it's own high speed bus, so as higher speeds are developed existing cards won't slow the bus down for newer devices.

It looks like ASRock may develop the PT880PRO boards, the question is when. Why not send them an email and ask, the worst that happens is they tell you to STFU.

Peerzy,
Your friend is facing the dilemma that I deal with every day.
Prospective buyers are always shocked to discover that hardly any of their equipment is going to carry over to the 939 platform.
It's not really feasable to just upgrade the CPU and RAM and carry on.

Old AGP vid cards ( even nice ones like the 9800 Pro) can't hold a candle to the PCI-e new guys.
Their PSU probably doesn't have the 24 pin mobo connector or the 6 pin video output, so there's another $100 (at least).
Got SATA? You'd better, cause that's the way it's all going.

Folks are better off just ditching the old PC altogether and starting from scratch.
Sad, but true.