P4P800 - Upgrades

Enjoying my new P4P800-SE and am thinking about a few other upgrades.
Appreciate any opinions:

1) Current video card = ATI radeon 7000 agp4x - primary use is 2d - any
advantage (2d speed or clarity) in upgrading to a radeon 9xxx series?

2) Using a Seagate 80gig ATA100 7200rpm drive ; would a SATA drive be
noticeably faster? Can a SATA drive (fat32) be booted to DOS (if needed
for file access) & also be used with format and fdisk (like a standard ide
drive)?

2) Lastly, using onboard sound (AD1985) - not bad quality ; would a basic
SB PCI card sound much better for playing music?

Thanks.

"Jim" wrote in message
...
Enjoying my new P4P800-SE and am thinking about a few other upgrades.
Appreciate any opinions:

1) Current video card = ATI radeon 7000 agp4x - primary use is 2d - any
advantage (2d speed or clarity) in upgrading to a radeon 9xxx series?

ati 7000 is a very low end card so a new card would help.
I have the same board running a 6600gt and it flys.




2) Using a Seagate 80gig ATA100 7200rpm drive ; would a SATA drive be
noticeably faster? Can a SATA drive (fat32) be booted to DOS (if needed
for file access) & also be used with format and fdisk (like a standard ide
drive)?

not that much of an improvement for everyday work, sata will improve game
preformance.

2) Lastly, using onboard sound (AD1985) - not bad quality ; would a basic
SB PCI card sound much better for playing music?

I use the onboard sound and if works fine for me, upgrade would be
completly up to you. You would get no speed improvement.



Thanks.

"BigJim" wrote in message
...

"Jim" wrote in message
...
Enjoying my new P4P800-SE and am thinking about a few other upgrades.
Appreciate any opinions:

1) Current video card = ATI radeon 7000 agp4x - primary use is 2d - any
advantage (2d speed or clarity) in upgrading to a radeon 9xxx series?

ati 7000 is a very low end card so a new card would help.
I have the same board running a 6600gt and it flys.




2) Using a Seagate 80gig ATA100 7200rpm drive ; would a SATA drive be
noticeably faster? Can a SATA drive (fat32) be booted to DOS (if needed
for file access) & also be used with format and fdisk (like a standard
ide
drive)?

not that much of an improvement for everyday work, sata will improve game
preformance.

2) Lastly, using onboard sound (AD1985) - not bad quality ; would a basic
SB PCI card sound much better for playing music?

I use the onboard sound and if works fine for me, upgrade would be
completly up to you. You would get no speed improvement.

Just sound improvement.

You should at least jump up to an ati 9600 series or nvidia 5700
series card. The other 2 choices will not be of great effect, unless
you jump to an audigy 2 card or sata raid. Here's my recommendations,
assuming you have at least a 2ghz to 3ghz proc:

-ati 9600 pro or xt...minimum (good buys on 9800's right now as well
as nvidia's 6600's...). Advantages are speed and memory. Clarity will
depend on your display, don't go to cheap. BenQ lcd's seem to have
excellent display quality, but most lcd's today will definatly keep
you off a crt for colour, brightness and contrast.

-sata raid, say 2 seagate or maxtor sata drives(60gb each) running
raid-0. You will definately notice that...Advantages are speed and
performance.

-audigy 2 zs, what else ? Advantages are sound quality and system
performance.

How fast is your poccessor and how much memory do you have ?


On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 12:27:29 -0400, Jim wrote:

Enjoying my new P4P800-SE and am thinking about a few other upgrades.
Appreciate any opinions:

1) Current video card = ATI radeon 7000 agp4x - primary use is 2d - any
advantage (2d speed or clarity) in upgrading to a radeon 9xxx series?

2) Using a Seagate 80gig ATA100 7200rpm drive ; would a SATA drive be
noticeably faster? Can a SATA drive (fat32) be booted to DOS (if needed
for file access) & also be used with format and fdisk (like a standard ide
drive)?

2) Lastly, using onboard sound (AD1985) - not bad quality ; would a basic
SB PCI card sound much better for playing music?

Thanks.