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
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.
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.
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).