To all the experts out there , need upgrade help.

W

Hi! I'm looking to upgrade from My P4 1.7Ghz.( yes, i know its about time!!)
I've narrowed down my choices to the foll:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 939)
Seagate 160 GB SATA HDD
a 400W smps ( up from 300w)
1GB (512MB*2) 400 MHz DDR ram.

Now , i'm quite clear about the above.
My trouble is with the motherboard choice.
I was thinking of a ASUS a8ne dlx mobo with a 6600 nongt card. However things went overbudget .Hence i need a mobo with decent onboard graphics , with a pcie slot for adding a good card later. It has also to be reasonably upgradable in terms of processor and ram. Am not a very serious gamer , but would like to play some of the more recent games. my needs are normally video processing ( from camcorder) , downloading large files and burning them onto DVD, etc
Also i have a resonably new 80Gb Pata HDD.Can i use it with a SATA HDD in the new system . Will the performance suffer ?
any idea about the ASROCK 939NF 4G mo bo ?
thank you all in advance.

D

You have 2 choices when it comes to Socket 939 mobo chipsets with onboard graphics with PCI-E x16 slot:
1. Radeon Xpress200 chipset
2. GeForce 6100/6150 chipset

Both are really good. If you decide on the Radeon chipset, you can get a MSI RS482M2-IL and if you want a GeForce 6100 chipset mobo, get a Asus A8N-VM. Don't consider buying Asrock. Stick to Asus and MSI mobo's.

Yes, you can use a PATA HDD along with a SATA HDD in the new system.

Just keep in mind that the ATI Chipset has SB400 as the southbridge and that is not exactly a good southbridge,worst to be specific.
ATI came out with SB450 for RD480 and RD580 chipsets but it was equally bad,they are working hard on SB600,lets hope its neat.