Anything worth waiting for in the near future?

[PascalT]

I'm in need of an upgrade (from top to bottom). Is there anything worth waiting a month or two more for? Obviously there's always something new and better on the horizon, but is now an efficient time to upgrade?

My upgrade cycle is usually every 18-24 months.

thanks!

 

[Markfw]

Well, not sure what everyone else will say, but a Q6600 + 4 gig memory is pretty affordable right now. And for a little more, you can get a Q9450, just saves a little heat and power, but not much @ 3.4 IMO.

 

[mancunian]

Originally posted by: PascalT
I'm in need of an upgrade (from top to bottom). Is there anything worth waiting a month or two more for? Obviously there's always something new and better on the horizon, but is now an efficient time to upgrade?

My upgrade cycle is usually every 18-24 months.

thanks!

If you're a gamer, I'd just wait for the new graphics cards to come out and get one of those.

 

[geoffry]

I agree with both of them. The CPU landscape is going to be the same for a little while now and a Q6600 or Q9300 for a quad or a e8400 or e7200 for a dual seems to be a good bet, especially if you overclock it.

And the upcoming 4xxx series from AMD and the GT200 from NVDA should offer solid upgrades to the current video cards. And they should be out in the next month or 2.

You could get the CPU / mobo / ram now and hold out for the vid card if you like. Or wait for the new cards to come out, an AMD K8 at 2.7 ghz isn't a terrible CPU by any means.

 

[doggyfromplanetwoof]

If you only upgrade 2-3+ years get a quad imo.

Unless you want to wait til the start of 2009, upgrade now. Even if you decide to wait, the new intel cpu's will no doubt be extreme price like all their other new releases. Of course AMD could pull something out of their butt.

 

[TC91]

i would wait, a 2.7ghz dual core K8 isnt a slow cpu by far. imo the cpu bottleneck is a little overblown. you could also try to push it farther, but if you are gaming, just grab a new graphics card this summer and wait till the next cycle to decide on a cpu (prices will drop by the time if nothing new is worthwhile). it also depends on the resolution you are playing at, at higher resolutions (ie 1680x1050 and higher) you re not likely to be as bottlenecked with your cpu, but your graphics setup will take precedence.

 

[PascalT]

thanks for the advices.

I'm not a gamer so the vid card isn't a big deal to me. I do graphic design and often it's print where my 2gb of RAM starts to choke. I also work in photoshop a ton which is CPU intensive. Ideally I would just get an extra 2gb of pc3200 but they're so expensive these days I might as well not invest in an old platform anymore.

I figure by selling my current hardware to offset the cost of new stuff, it'd come out to about 425-500 bucks total (~$650 - $150)

 

[Markfw]

If you save your case,psu,vid (if its PCI-E), you HD and DVD stuff, you can re-use it all. Just sell the mobo/proc/ram/cooler.

 

[PascalT]

Yup. Not sure I will re-use the PSU though, I think 420w is pushing it a bit. I was looking at the 600w OCZ ones. I've had such a good experience with their products I will buy from them again. Same goes for DFI unless there's a really good reason to go with Gigabyte or Asus. Haven't looked at those yet..

thanks!

 

[demiurge3141]

wait for the 45nm e2 equivalent for some massive budget fun