Question about upgrading pc.

I got a Radeon 9700 Pro for Christmas ( ) , but the rest of my pc is getting old. i have a 1.1 Pentium Celeron with 256 ram. What i wanted to do was get a new processor, but I will need a new motherboard (I got one of those pre-built compaqs).

I am wondering if I could buy a new motherboard and cpu and use the rest of my hardware (cdrom, hard drives,etc...) with it. I have never installed a motherboard or cpu, so I'm pretty much in the dark on this.

I am hoping I would be able to use my hard drive on a new motherboard without having to format them and lose everything. Backing up is such a pain. I have 2 hard drives, if it matters.

Also, while on the subject, what motherboard/cpu do you reccomend? And are there any books that you reccomend I read before I do this.

I will greatly appreciate any help you guys give me. This is my first post on this board, and I wasn't sure where to put this, so excuse me if it would be better suited for another board. Thanks in advance.

[Uranium-235]

the standard motherboard now-a-days (ATX) might not fit correctly in some of those compaq cases

other then that I'm not sure what I can recommend cause I'm not sure what kind of ram you have. I'm guessing PC-100 with a celeron, which might not be that good for todays motherboards

I recommend something AMD, but then again I'm a bit impartial

thats an old system

i think you need a new case and stuff
might as well buy a new comp without the video card

I am hoping I would be able to use my hard drive on a new motherboard without having to format them and lose everything. Backing up is such a pain. I have 2 hard drives, if it matters.

It's unlikely the OS would boot after changing the motherboard. HOWEVER, it is possible. Windows can surprise you sometimes.

[MIK3]

Heh. Tell me about it. Stupid Windows...I had both my HD's out of the case, but w/ the power and ide cables plugged in, and it started up smooth an fine. As soon as I place the HD's in the case, screwed in and all, but with out unplugging the ide and power cables, it decides to not reconise the hd's. Luckily Im patient, and after about the 5 or 6th try...it worked, believe it or not...

I had that problem with my Sound card and modem. One day, my modem's driver just disappeared from the device manager and couldn't connect to the net. I found out that xp thinks that my sound card has a modem also for some reason so it just thought to use my sound card's driver and deleted my modem driver. I had to reinstall them two times and after that a couple of days later it did it to me again. The first try to reinstall the drivers worked.

So your saying I'd be better off getting a new computer and using the video card I have now? Would I be able to use my old hard drives on a new comp? I might do this, so help would be greatly appreciated.

Yea, your best bet would be to upgrade your motherboard and memory to go with the ATI card. You might want to stick with a 4x AGP board as I hear the 9700 has 8x problems on some boards. Do your homework first by visiting some other hardware related forums to make sure you don't run into any incompatabilities. There are some other ATI users here that can give you some recomendations of what works best for them.

As for your Hard Drives, you didn't mention if they were ATA 33, 66, 133, or SATA. Most motherboards support the 33, 66, and 133 with a growing number of them also supporting SATA. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be ok using what you have. Like I said, just do your homework and you'll be fine.

EDIT: One other thing, you didn't mention what model Compaq you have so I'm gonna recommend that you get a new case because it's POSSIBLE you wont be able to drop a new motherboard in the Compaq case.

Yea, you are gonna have to buy a new case, mobo, fans, memory, to start out with.
A new ATX mobo will not (in most cases) fit in that compact case.
Since Compact is a propriatory system only compact components will work in the case and mobo.

Get a good case, the Chieftec (alienware type) cases are about $100.00 and they include a good 420 Watt PS.
The memory DDR2700-DDR3000 will cost about $140.00-$160.00 depends on the brand.
The A7N8X/dx mobo will cost you about $145.00, and the case fans (good ones) are about $5.00 each. (you will need 5, 80mm fans).
This is a total of about $420.00, but this is an excellent platform to build on for a long time, and a super platform to install the Radeon 9700 Pro.

since u have that much to buy
might as well get a new comp
spend 1000 bucks and get a decend system without the graphics card since u already have the best one at the moment