MSI AmethystM (MS-7184) Help

My Compaq computer has this board (although MSI apparently disown it!) which has a Radeon XPress 200 chipset and was delivered with an ATI X1300 Pro graphics card. I want to upgrade this, however, and bought a Sapphire HD-4770 and installed it into the PCI-E x16 slot (the card is 2.0). However, whilst the card appears to work (i.e. I can see something on screen) screen updates have slowed to half and my Audigy 4 sound is corrupted. Add to this the fact that Core2 of my Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor is running at 100% when idle and there is, obviously, something wrong!

I've upgraded the PSU to 550W, as per the graphic card's request and followed a number of suggestions on the ATI graphics board, here, but to no avail.

Does anyone have experience of trying to upgrade graphics with this motherboard and been met with success?

Frustrated.

I have an HP a1250n with the MSI Amethyst-M MS-7184 that came with the same Radeon 200 built in graphics and an AMD X2 3800+ CPU. I am looking into the max speed X2 CPU this board can handle. One reference in a manual says, "Supports up to 4000+ Athlon 64 FX-55, or higher CPU." Then it refers to a now defunct web address for more info. At the time written the 4000+ was likely the fastest available, hence the "or higher" part of the quote.
Another source says 4800+... probably a newer source. Can I get the 7750+ or 7850, the fastest I've seen in the X2 socket 939 pin type? If I got one too fast would it just 'limp' along at a lower speed of, say, 4800? Still better that my 3800 + current CPU.

What graphics card can, safely, be used? Apparently not the ATI X1300 Pro graphics card that 'frustrated_uk' bought. (so sorry about your woes, friend, but I have no solution. Will look around for any info on your video board, promise. Can't say as to getting results, however, but I WILL look.

@frustrated_uk - Old thread with no update so you have probably already sorted this out.

This is an older machine so the PCI slot is not 2.0 compliant, so it will not get the most out of your card.

There is also bios update http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...item=pv-39430-1 for it that sounds like it addresses the audio problem you mentioned.

To see what was taking your cpu resources check in system manager to identify the processes with high resource usage.

MSI proably do not advertise it because it is an OEM board for HP, which means HP are responsible for the support on the board.

@JCLbs - The HP specs state it should support up to 4800+ (usually a good indication), you need someone that has upgraded to board to tell you if it works or not and what they could get it to run.