future proofing?

[newellrp1]

hey i am in the process of selecting a motherboard/CPU right now and i was wondering what is the best platform for future proofing. Now before you flame me, i am *well* aware of the rapid pace of PC development and rapid obsolescence of components. however, my current PC building strategy has been to buy and up to date motherboard and with a low MHz high end CPU (does that make sense?) and then later when the fastest CPU my MB can handle drops to a much lower price, upgrade to that one. for example, my current PC started with a 700 MHz Duron and then i switched to a 1200Mhz athlon. I now want to know if i should go for the P4 since the 2.8 Ghz are cheap and the newest iteration appears to be ready to scale past 3.4 Ghz or should i wait for the socket 939 and make the jump from a64 to a64fx? is that possible with the same Mobo w/o reinstalling windows xp? i have installed windows so many times over the years i like to avoid it whenever possible. i am also open to chipset/mobo recommendations. my priorities for motherboards are speed and stability, the only feature that i require is SATA raid 0.

 

[Vette73]

P4 is at the end of its socket life so wqait for the 775? socket if you want that


BUT I myself got rif of my P4 setup and got a Athlon64 3000+. You can wait for the 939 chips and board but the price may be a little high

 

[newellrp1]

is the P4 really at the end of its socket life? the prescott just came out, how far is it going to go, Mhz-wise?

 

[Xemus]

Prescott is supposed to go well into the 4GHz range. THey're gearing up for the P5 now tho, which is supposed to hit (speculation here) 5-7 GHz.
Who knows tho, since Intel just changed their processor rating stategy, they may make more changes and follow AMD's strategy.

Wierder things have happened.

 

[Zap]

My MO is to find out what is the biggest, baddest and fastest computer, then aim for 90% of the performance at 50% of the price. Then, I replace the system twice as often. I start out with only 90% of the performance, but the replacement system should handily outperform the previous best.

My suggestion is to first get over your adversion to reinstalling Windows. I'm not talking about a weekly or monthly reinstall (like a buddy of mine). Reinstalling once a year is not too frequent.

I used to look for an upgrade path, however I've found that I inevitably change the motherboard as well for a few reasons. Mostly I've found that there are sometimes enough changes within a year's time for me to want a newer board. Partly I've found that my old chips are easier to sell if I have a motherboard to go with them.