:Waldo: I'm looking to upgrade my aging Asus A7NX MB with an old ~2.8ghz (don't remember the exact speed) AMD processor to something a little faster. I'm running XP Home and have no plans to run Vista anytime soon.
I don't see any need to buy new drives and go through the hassle of new installs on everything. So, I'm not planning on doing anything other than just plugging in the new MB, CPU, RAM and if necessary a graphics card.
I'm looking at Newegg.com, the Asus M2N+ SLI Vista MB and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache. Not real sure that I need that level of performance. CS2 seems to run fairly well on the system that I have, but I'd like to at least triple the performance. I'm guessing that the above MB/CPU is probably at least 10 times faster than my current system.
But, the MB doesn't have an AGP slot, which means I'd have to buy another video card. Any decent cards out there to run dual monitor with my old Nokia 445Xpro CRT monster plus an AOC LCD? I don't care about game performance, just a good, solid graphics card for CS2 is fine.
I'm thinking of getting 3gigs of memory. The MB has 4 slots. I see some new brands, like Wintec, OCZ, and Patriot, along with Corsair, Kingston, PNY, etc. Any brands to avoid?
My main concern is system stability. No plans to overclock. I just want a good, solid performer. So, any advice on a combo to stick in my tower would be appreciated.
I've done some preliminary research on this stuff, mainly on the XP/CS2/memory issue. One of the things that stuck out was that Tiger Direct was thought to be a poor vendor and that Newegg was much better.
Any thoughts on other vendors or if you think I'm goofing up, would also be appreciated.
Thanks!
I don't see any need to buy new drives and go through the hassle of new installs on everything. So, I'm not planning on doing anything other than just plugging in the new MB, CPU, RAM and if necessary a graphics card.
I'm looking at Newegg.com, the Asus M2N+ SLI Vista MB and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache. Not real sure that I need that level of performance. CS2 seems to run fairly well on the system that I have, but I'd like to at least triple the performance. I'm guessing that the above MB/CPU is probably at least 10 times faster than my current system.
But, the MB doesn't have an AGP slot, which means I'd have to buy another video card. Any decent cards out there to run dual monitor with my old Nokia 445Xpro CRT monster plus an AOC LCD? I don't care about game performance, just a good, solid graphics card for CS2 is fine.
I'm thinking of getting 3gigs of memory. The MB has 4 slots. I see some new brands, like Wintec, OCZ, and Patriot, along with Corsair, Kingston, PNY, etc. Any brands to avoid?
My main concern is system stability. No plans to overclock. I just want a good, solid performer. So, any advice on a combo to stick in my tower would be appreciated.
I've done some preliminary research on this stuff, mainly on the XP/CS2/memory issue. One of the things that stuck out was that Tiger Direct was thought to be a poor vendor and that Newegg was much better.
Any thoughts on other vendors or if you think I'm goofing up, would also be appreciated.
Thanks!