Choices left for Non Nehalem Owners?

[clarkey01]

I was thinking before, maybe in 6 months, swap out my Q6600 for Q9650 @ 3.6Ghz, Perhaps swap out my 4GB for an 8GB RAM kit..

Make sense ? Or should I wait a year and then get a Nehalem board and CPU?

 

[MyLeftNut]

I was thinking the same thing and it made more sense to me to wait a year for nehalem. Got a similar setup with an E6400 at 3.6Ghz.

I don't see why the setup you have now would be a problem for you to keep for another year.

 

[mauri]

I've been thinking the same thing lately. Right now I have Q6600 @ 3GHz (stock voltages) coupled with 4GB RAM and 4870. I think my processor could overclock more, but I really haven't tried to push it more (I just set the FSB to 333 and called it a day). What I'm mostly likely going to do is to use that setup for ~about a year and upgrade it to Nehalem. It migh also depend also when the next generation (or evolution of current generation) of graphic cards from ATI and Nvidia roll out.

But I still find Nehalem very tempting at the moment But what I'm waiting most is to prices come down a bit before I'm even starting to consider the change.

edit: typos.

 

[Bateluer]

Nothing, my E8500@stock and plenty for now. I'll look into Westmere, Nehalem's refresh.

 

[Keysplayr]

Wait for official benchmarks. Then decide.

 

[Drsignguy]

I would have to agree with all the above and just wait for a while until all the hype and price levels off. I also would like to see the real world feedback so I have a better idea on what is better for my needs. As for my rigs, they will last for quite some time so I have no worries.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Nothing, my E8500@stock and plenty for now. I'll look into Westmere, Nehalem's refresh.

im in a similar boat im running a E8400 @ 4GHz and ill prob wait for Westmere as well, only thing ill prob upgrade before then is GFX Card

 

[BoboKatt]

Have a Q6600 G0 and also added a new Q9550 just a month ago. Very nice that new chip in how well it runs smoothly at 3.6, runs quiet and cool . However honestly it was not tremendous leap over the Q6600 by any means. Save your coin bud... as other said... wait AT LEAST for a some official reviews of the new Nehalem.

At any rate... I have to admit Intel did some a damn good job with the Q6600 G0... it's so hard to justify anything thus far over it unless you are like me (and many others) that JUST NEED to get something new to play with. Nothing will be a quantum leap.

 

[ghost recon88]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Nothing, my E8500@stock and plenty for now. I'll look into Westmere, Nehalem's refresh.

Thats gonna be 32nm right? I'm gonna hold onto my E8600/P45 setup until then.

 

[Martimus]

Deneb and Yorkfield are the quad core alternatives. Both should be cheaper on the whole (cheaper RAM and MB, along with mostly cheaper CPU's). I plan on getting one of those in the Spring, but maybe I will go for an i7 instead if there aren't any known issues with the initial platform (whether it be the chipset, CPU, MB, or new triple channel DDR3 RAM.)

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: Martimus
Deneb and Yorkfield are the quad core alternatives. Both should be cheaper on the whole (cheaper RAM and MB, along with mostly cheaper CPU's). I plan on getting one of those in the Spring, but maybe I will go for an i7 instead if there aren't any known issues with the initial platform (whether it be the chipset, CPU, MB, or new triple channel DDR3 RAM.)

Yeah, I trust the new Deneb quads. They seem very good at price/performance and they'll be introduced first on DDR2 platforms, so that is a plus. But, we'll have to see for ourselves if they worth the money.

 

[Extelleron]

At this point I'm not sure I'm going to go Nehalem. The benefits don't seem to really be there; maybe for encoding and benchmarks, but not for gaming which is what I do mostly. This E8400 is enough for gaming of course, but that doesn't stop me from wanting more

Deneb is actually looking really good right now, if it turns out that it is a solid boost over Agena, overclocks well, and comes at a decent price, I think I will go with it over Nehalem.'

Aside from price, Nehalem just isn't looking that rosy. We haven't seem much overclocking, but even the new C0 chips seem to require 1.4V+ to get 4GHz and we are not even told if that is stable or not. In gaming the performance looks to be similar per clock to Yorkfield, maybe 5-10% faster in certain situations. Nehalem is a server CPU, and it will lend itself well to multithreaded environments because of SMT. But unfortunately, on the desktop, 8 threads is not really an advantage right now for a good number of people.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
I was thinking before, maybe in 6 months, swap out my Q6600 for Q9650 @ 3.6Ghz, Perhaps swap out my 4GB for an 8GB RAM kit..

Make sense ? Or should I wait a year and then get a Nehalem board and CPU?

What are you doing with your computer that you feel a 3GHz quad-core (of any kind - phenom/kenstfield/yorkfield/deneb/nehalem) is holding you back and you would be well-served spending more money to upgrade another 0.6GHz to a 3.6GHz machine?

Personally I hate doing upgrades jsut to gain a 20% performance boost in synthetic benchmarks and maybe half that (10%) in real app performance. But if your time is money than it can always be cost-justified.

If you aren't CPU limited in a way that actually limits you (is it really all that terrible to have your encode jobs take 45min versus 40min?) then you are always better off putting that money into an interest bearing FDIC insured CD and come back in a year to buy hardware at half the price or twice the performance.

 

[Zapper48]

I might opt for a 4850/4870 but otherwise I'm sticking with what I have for at least a year.

 

[Avalon]

Might upgrade my E8400 to a 45nm quad in a year if I suddenly find the need for it. I primarily game, so at this point I'd get very little benefit from the upgrade. I don't think I'll be getting a Nehalem anytime soon, unless budget Nehalem CPUs arrive that can overclock well.

 

[nerp]

I have an E8400 at 3.6, about to shoot for 4ghz. Coupled with 4GB ram and an ATI 4850 -- upgrading to nehalem seems totally ridiculous to me. As Idontcare said, I don't see any compelling reason to improve my benchmark scores. I'm getting 300+ fps in source games, I can play S.T.A.L.K.E.R with max settings with insanely good FPS. I can convert a DVD to a tight xvid .avi in under 20 minutes. Even faster, depending on the source. I'm not running a datacenter or high impact databases. What's the point?

The truth is, I could have kept my Opteron 180 system all along and never switched to Intel. The difference in performance isn't even really all that noticable unless you sit there with a stopwatch.

And with nehalem's pricing structure, coupled with the cost of DDR3 and THREE sticks required to get tri-channel, it's a whole lot of money for a whole lot of ho-hum. Yes, it's sexy, yes it's fast. But faster by enough of a measure to warrant upgrading now? No. A year from now? Doubtful. Two years? Maybe. But by then, we'll see what AMD is offering.

When my E8400/4850 system can't play brand new games on medium settings with more than 10fps, then i'll consider upgrading. For now, I think any upgrade on my part would be purely for the itch to build something new. I'd rather save the $800 for a new platform and buy round trip tickets to paris and enjoy a nice vacation.

 

[OCGuy]

8GB of ram? What do you use your computer for?

 

[Riverhound777]

Using E8400 @ 4050mhz right now. No plans to upgrade any time soon. Maybe another 4gb ram later or a newer vid card, but thats it.

 

[Wuzup101]

I probably will add another 4850 in xfire in a few months (and that's really dependent on what games are like). I don't plan on upgrading to Nehalem... possibly the refresh... and probably not the day that the refresh launches Honestly... this Q6600@3.2 is plenty fast for right now... and probably has a bit of headroom to go higher... plenty fast for everything I need.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
8GB of ram? What do you use your computer for?

Solidworks, autocad, Vmware, Gaming.

I was talking today to someone with a MAC who told me he reckons his macbook is faster then my rig at the multimedia stuff....Apple fools.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: clarkey01

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
8GB of ram? What do you use your computer for?

Solidworks, autocad, Vmware, Gaming.

I was talking today to someone with a MAC who told me he reckons his macbook is faster then my rig at the multimedia stuff....Apple fools.

Never battle arrogance when at its heart lies ignorance. Unless you fancy to waste your time. Clubbing baby seals with nerf baseball bats, harmless fun but kinda pointless and gets boring after a few years.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
8GB of ram? What do you use your computer for?

...

love how all you guys forgot X58 is tri chanel

So that means its either 3 or 6 not 2 or 4

 

[evident]

i will try to wait for when nehalem refresh's prices go down, at the earliest. that is if i have self control

 

[harpoon84]

Currently running an E4400 / P5B Deluxe, will probably look to upgrade to a Q6600 or Q9650 if prices fall a lot after Nehalem launches.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Sticking with what I have, unless I'm blown away by Denab. Since I'm a gamer mostly, I wouldn't notice much, if anything, over what I have now I'm willing to bet. Getting 150FPS instead of 120FPS just doesn't excite me.