Pc motherboard upgrade questions

Tech Talk
1

I’m considering upgrading my pc so that I can play blu ray movies on a blu ray rom drive.

The blu ray drive requires a graphics card, which requires pci express, which my motherboard doesn’t have. It only has agp.

Can someone please recommend me a good motherboard so that I can have an idea of how much it would cost. thanks

Also, if there’s certain upcoming future technology such as pci express part deux, and if there’s a need to get a motherboard with pci-e part deux slots, please let me know

Here’s my pc specifications:

Intel Pentium D 940 Dual Core 3.2Ghz Pc
Pc Chips P21G S. LGA775 SATA Board V/A/L
Intel Pentium D 940 Dual Core 3.2Ghz
Regular Cooling Fan With HeatSink
2 X 512Mb DDR400 PC3200 Total Of 1GB
160GB SATA150 7200rpm Hard Drive
UniChrome Pro 3D Graphics 64MB Shared AGP Adapte
HOUSE BRAND DVD & CD DRIVE
3D STEREO SOUND CARD ADAPTER
10/100 NETWORK ADAPTER (LAN)
Broadcom 56K V.90 PCI Modem / Fax & Lan
ATX WINDOW & FRONT LED CASE 400WT BLACK
2x Case Cooling Fan 80mm (Regular Speed)
MS WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION
Keboard & Optical Mouse PS2 Combo Kit

Exempt $709.33
Total $709.33

if it’s obvious that the price indicates I got ripped off, please let me know. I bought the pc around june 2006

thanks

2

You got ripped off. That being said, your situation is tricky. If you upgrade your mobo, and you don’t want to get a pos, but rather something that will last a while, it’s going to require you to buy new ram, and obviously a new vid card as well, so even if you keep your current processor, you’re looking at $300 with a cheap mobo and midline vid card, and bargain ram, or 500ish if you buy quality components.

3

I went out and bought this:

what do you think?

4

how did he get ripped off? if he bought it in 2006, that sounds about right if you didnt build it yourself since the processor alone back then was $400+.

anyway, not true that you need pci-e for blueray. the fastest agp card to date is the 3850 and it has full HD decoding. problem is it costs a lot, $140+ and can be hard to find.

you made the right choice because you can upgrade the processor to a Core 2 Duo and get a video card like the 8800gs for the price of that agp card. and the board you got is fine as long as you dont need overclocking abilities and its stable.

5

I would have suggested a Gigabyte board based on Intel’s P35 chipset, but that should be fine.

If you aren’t going to be playing games, there are some cards that don’t have a lot of 3D power, but still have full HD decoding for movies. The one I have is an Nvidia 8500GT, which can be had for around $45-60. ATI has a couple as well. By “games” I mean modern 3D games; emulators would still run great. Try to get one with an HDMI output (they support 2 monitors so you still get DVI).