Upgrade motherboard on windows 8

I'm guessing it's better to do a clean install, but I'll ask since this is windows 8. I have a old popular M3A78 EM using a 9850 Phenom. It still uses ddr2 and sata 2 (I have a ssd card so I'm still getting sata 3 speeds for my hard drive).

I'm just wondering if I should upgrade before windows 8. I plan on getting the windows 8 upgrade and then an upgrade for visual studio. If I do upgrade after windows 8, I'd have to install windows 7 on the new machine and then upgrade it to windows 8 again.

I think the upgrade of windows 8 is a lot cheaper than the full version, which is almost or is the price of a new motherboard.

I guess the other option is to do nothing. My computer is decently fast right now, I could speed up some of the compiling and debugging on visual studio though.

I personally haven't had a success doing an upgrade install, as I do custom clean installs. The motherboard seems fine to use, and I would imagine everything should work perfectly. And as you have a SSD, I don't see an immediate need to upgrade unless if you need better graphics performance.