CPU Prices

[Demon-Xanth]

Okay, here I am looking at Newegg's site and seeing "1.4GHz AMD Athlon (AYHJA) $120" and I'm remembering paying about $200 for a low end 233K6 and shortly there after having a friend pay $750 for a 450P2.

I wanna know when replacing a high end computer every year IS going to be a reasonable option (at this rate: not long)

 

[Qualin]

AMD T-Bird 1.4 Ghz are selling for $299 here in Canada.

Back in 1997 I paid $250 for my AMD K6-2/350. If I had
gone to 400 Mhz, it would have been nearly $100 extra.

Yes, I have to admit that purchasing the highest end
hardware, only to end up having it be next to worthless
in under three years is somewhat frustrating but the
big deal with computers will be, the more you pay, the
more preformance you get... but the slower it'll go
obselete.

My workplace used Pentium 133 systems right up until
just last year. We purchased a couple of Celeron 333's
because Office 97 wouldn't run properly on the P133's.
Eventually, my company phased out all of the P133's
and replaced them with Pentium 3/733's. In about
another three years these machines will be obselete
too, but they won't be replaced until things stop
(Or won't) run on them, like the newest version of
Microsoft Bloat.

Consider for a moment that Windows XP makes any
machine take a 25 percent preformance hit. Then
consider how Windows 95 made a preformance hit on
486 machines that were previously running Windows
3.1. I gather it was just as much of a preformance
hit, if not moreso.

I could have stayed with my K6-2/350 but I found
increasingly that more and more apps that I used
demanded more and more power. So, I recommend to
you only to upgrade if you find that your apps
just don't run well anymore and you haven't
reinstalled your OS.

 

[Hellblast]

buying the latest and greatest is in my view unnecessary these days. The budget solutions are so good that the expensive stuff is good for nothing but talk and very high end stuff the mainstream user does not do.
It used to be tough to be behind the power curve but today if you fall behind by a year or more you can still do what everybody else does with new equipment with reasonable performance.

Hellblast

 

[Demon-Xanth]

My point is that in the past where a high end computer ran $4-5000, now it's only about $2000. So the decision of "2000 every two years or $5000 every three or four" is lowered to "2000 every three or four years or $1250 every two", or because prices have come down so much the decision "$2000 every two years" is again a valid choice which yeilds a high end computer more often.

When is it that "$x every year" is going to be a reasonable option?

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Hellblast: when a 950 Duron is $62 and the 1.4GHz Athlon is only $53 more, that's not too much of a strech. Especially compared to when a 233K6 was $200, and a 450P2 was $550 more.

 

[Garet Jax]

Demon,

Good question. I bought the Rig you see described below for under $700 (already had the monitor). Although it is not top of the line, it is very close (no GEForce 3, no DDR and no Thunderbird).

When buying a new computer, I have always tried to stay about a year behind the curve. The good thing is that the price has progressively gotten more resonable to do so.

My personal opinion though is that replacing a high end computer is never going to be considered a resonable option as long as people are buying computers (regardless of the price). People just don't like replacing things that they own every year or two. The car industry figured this out and came up with a car lease. For computers to follow the same path as cars, the computer industry needs to come up with some sort of lease.

Having said that though, I haven't bought a name brand machine since 1992. I have built every computer I have owned since then by getting the parts that I thought were the best I could afford based on my budget at the time. This is where the car industry and the computer industry are very different. For cars you lease the entire car, for it to be successful in the computer industry we would have to be able to lease the individual components.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Deliximus]

I saw Tbird 1.4s for 195 in Canada (Vancouver)

they went down 40 bucks CDN in three days...........crazy