Great news for producers, crap news for us. Sometime next year your upgrade will require a 100% new PC. Well OK not quite, but not far off - your ram and peripherals will probably be OK, maybe hard drive - probably if you have a SATA one. The case fans will probably be ok too, though they might read this and correct their forgetfullness.
OK so everyone expects they'll need to buy a new motherboard for the latest CPU's next year, maybe unless you have an Opteron.
But, invested in a quality case? quality PSU? Going to need new ones when BTX (Balanced Technology Extended) comes along.
Uber expensive graphics card sitting in your machine? Oops, its not going to fit in PCI-Express. I dont even have a clue if any normal PCI devices are going to fit - but I'm assuming not.
Even looking at pics of Athlon64 motherboards, expensive bolt-on socket A heatsinks likely wont have a chance of fitting.
Well OK, so ill-informed scaremongering over, the above is the impression I get from things I've read since PCI-Express and BTX started getting mentioned. I have no clue how it affects servers or whatever, frankly I dont care, only interested in desktops, particularily mine.
Any good info sources, or opinions on these? What's the thoughts about having to replace practically everything in your PC next time round? Thinking of delaying that upgrade now, or scaling back from the high end options? Sceptical the new standards are just new money-making standards? Most importantly of course, is it worth me buying that expensive 9800pro/TX when the damn thing wont fit my new system a year from now?
quick info on PCI-Express, more detail.
also note Graphics for PCI Express to pose real cooling problems.
Cant find much on BTX, I think its not announced fully yet :/ IIRC there's a pic of what I assume is a BTX mobo in the anandtech PCI-Express article (at first I thought the image had been flipped). There is a snippet at the bottom of inq - about a dozen other places seem to know/say the same and no more.
OK so everyone expects they'll need to buy a new motherboard for the latest CPU's next year, maybe unless you have an Opteron.
But, invested in a quality case? quality PSU? Going to need new ones when BTX (Balanced Technology Extended) comes along.
Uber expensive graphics card sitting in your machine? Oops, its not going to fit in PCI-Express. I dont even have a clue if any normal PCI devices are going to fit - but I'm assuming not.
Even looking at pics of Athlon64 motherboards, expensive bolt-on socket A heatsinks likely wont have a chance of fitting.
Well OK, so ill-informed scaremongering over, the above is the impression I get from things I've read since PCI-Express and BTX started getting mentioned. I have no clue how it affects servers or whatever, frankly I dont care, only interested in desktops, particularily mine.
Any good info sources, or opinions on these? What's the thoughts about having to replace practically everything in your PC next time round? Thinking of delaying that upgrade now, or scaling back from the high end options? Sceptical the new standards are just new money-making standards? Most importantly of course, is it worth me buying that expensive 9800pro/TX when the damn thing wont fit my new system a year from now?
quick info on PCI-Express, more detail.
also note Graphics for PCI Express to pose real cooling problems.
Cant find much on BTX, I think its not announced fully yet :/ IIRC there's a pic of what I assume is a BTX mobo in the anandtech PCI-Express article (at first I thought the image had been flipped). There is a snippet at the bottom of inq - about a dozen other places seem to know/say the same and no more.