Shared Memory Question

[Husar]

AsRock 939Dual-Sata. AFAIK the only AGP/PCIe mobo on the market where AGP isn't completely tanked.

CPU - get an AMD dual core. Either a cheapo Opteron 165 if you're an overclocker, or as decent an X2 as you're willing to pay for if not. Since you're using DDR1, and since the only AGP/PCIe mobo I know of it the ASrock above, a Core2 Duo isn't workable.

HD - eh...whatever.

Wrong.
I myself use an AsRock 775 Dual-VSTA.
It supports the Core 2 Duo, has AGP8x, PCIe x4(x16 cards do fit and work but run only at PCIe x4)
Concerning RAM, it has two slots for DDR1 up to 400MHz and two slots for DDR2 up to 667MHz, you can't use both simultaneously though.(I once had a board that ran Edo- and SD Ram simultaneously IIRC, but that was ages ago)

It's also outfitted with four internal and two external SATA 2 connectors.

I bought this along with an E6600 and have since upgraded from an NVidia 6600GT AGP to an NVidia 7950GT PCIe and from 1GB DDR1 to 2GB DDR2 and so far the system runs pretty stable and pretty fast, a great piece for upgrading IMO but because of the slow PCIe connection I am now looking to get a somewhat decent NForce 6 board.

[Lucjan]

I'm leaning towards (since I'm getting my tax return money very soon) simply tanking the agp card altogether and buying the pci x16 version of the same card.

If that were the case, any ideas on the mobo and cpu? I am most definately going to be getting a dual core, but as for whether I go amd or intel I'm not sure, I've always used intel for almost everything but my laptop runs on amd, and I haven't had any problems with it but because of the graphics card difference can't compare it to my intel cpu on the desktop.

[Husar]

I'm leaning towards (since I'm getting my tax return money very soon) simply tanking the agp card altogether and buying the pci x16 version of the same card.

If that were the case, any ideas on the mobo and cpu? I am most definately going to be getting a dual core, but as for whether I go amd or intel I'm not sure, I've always used intel for almost everything but my laptop runs on amd, and I haven't had any problems with it but because of the graphics card difference can't compare it to my intel cpu on the desktop.

You'd still have to look for a mobo with DDR1 slots and since these are either rare or old, you could go with the one I have or get a decent one and also buy 2GB DDR2 memory for about 200$ in addition to the rest.

[Lucjan]

I should be getting enough back that I won't have to worry about buying ddr2's.