Help on upgrading

[zalle]

Hi,

I have the 4COREDUAL-VSTA ASRock > Products > 4CoreDual-VSTA

and the following config:

3GB DDRII 667 RAM (won't recognise 4GB in Win7 64 bit)
Q6600 2.4Mhz
ATI X1600 512MB graphic card

What should I upgrade? I tried RAM but it won't recognise it, and looks like 4GB is the most I can get anyway.

Should I upgrade videocard? What makes sense? Or motherboard? I already have BIOS 2.30, the latest (from 2008).

Thanks for any input.

[PrairieDawg]

Re: Help on upgrading

Someone else may have a more informed opinion but it looks to me like you have kind of come to a dead end with your system. The videocard could be updated but your board is limited to PCI Express x4 or AGP x8. The RAM on your board is officially limited to 2GB - you are already past that. Changing the motherboard to something more updated (and worthwhile) is probably going to require you to replace your CPU (yours is an outdated 775 socket) RAM (DDR3 is replacing DDR2) and probably your videocard (even if yours is a PCI Express it is outdated as well). Sorry but I really don't see any worthwhile upgrades for you.

[zalle]

Re: Help on upgrading

Not worth upgrading the videocard? No real benefit then due to 4X PCIE and AGP 8X?

[PrairieDawg]

Re: Help on upgrading

You could probably gain a bit with a new videocard but I'm not too sure how much. Maybe someone here has stats on 4x PCIE that would be of assistance. New videocards are designed for PCIE 2.0 x16 so I'm thinking you will hit some sort of wall with the PCIE 1.0 x4 issue. Buying a better AGP card would just get you another dead end part if you ever do a complete upgrade. You didn't list your power supply unit but if you do decide to get a better videocard be sure that the PSU is up to the task.

[AsrockNewbie]

Re: Help on upgrading

Well, that chipset is a _little_ bit dated, so motherboard and PCI-E video card.
You just need to find a LGA 775 motherboard with faster chipset.

Although you might be better off building a new system for a scratch. That way you can sell the old one as a working system unit after you taken your data from it and secure erased the disks before reinstalling OS.