Is it time for me to upgrade my 3 yr old PC

[PCNoob101]

I built my PC about 3 years ago and it cost around 1600. At the time it was close to top of the line. These are some specs:

AMD 2100+ athlon xp
512mb pc2100 ddram
GeForce4 TI4600 128 mb
santa cruz sound card
asus a7v266-e mother board
HD 80GB ,WD 7200rpm 8mb

I was wondering if it's time to upgrade. I don't play many games. I am thinking about playing around with video editing. If it is time for me to upgrade, what would be a good choice? I heard that intel cpu is better for video editing? Is this true. What would be a good choice? I know there are many different speeds and cores out and dont know too much about them? Thanks

 

[thermalpaste]

stick onto your pc for a few more months, let the nforce-4 boards trickle in and then think of an upgrade. Intels are better for video editing and they may also serve you as a heater during winters...... Wait for 2-3 months, you have decent hardware as of now. Intel's prescott core is good for video editing....

 

[PCNoob101]

Sorry, but what are nforce-4 boards?

 

[dc5]

Originally posted by: PCNoob101
Sorry, but what are nforce-4 boards?

a type of motherboard that is coming out soon.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: PCNoob101
Sorry, but what are nforce-4 boards?

One of the leading chipmakers for motherboards used with AMD's processors has been slow to release a chipset with DDR2 and PCIe slots provided for. Both of those are new standards that the computer producing industry is adopting. At present, if you choose an AMD cpu, you can't use a nVidia chipset that has those features. The reference setup with such featues has been shown, and named, and its name was the nF4.

Also, since the release of the Six-series graphics adapters with nVidia graphics chips, users have been promised on-chip decoding of video with those. Maybe the 6600's and 6800's need to be matched to an nF4 mother board to do this, and I missed seeing that in the news releases. I used to be one of those who had to wait to see how a new technology affected things before carrying forward with my PC upgrade plans. Now, I can't AFFORD the newest, latest, and greatest, and just carry forward with my plans without much reference to that bleeding edge stuff.

The only relatively weak spot for video editing that I think that I see in your present system is the Hdd size (although that 80 Gb one surely isn't three years old, and I'm not at all sure that the ti 4600 could be bought that long ago, either). The video files you'll need to edit tend to be huge; 200-250 Gb Hdd's are seemingly the rule for that purpose.

 

[uOpt]

Intel CPUs don't have the usual speed disadvantage when compressing or uncompressing video, but that doesn't neccessarily mean they are better bang for the buck.

The real real to get Intel is if you like the mainboards/chipsets better.

Also, video editing is not neccessarily as simple as just decoding and encoding.

 

[PCNoob101]

One of my other computers is about to sh*t the bed. So if I need to upgrade in the near future, what would be my best bet if Im going to mess around with editing video, and more concerned with performance with applications that with gaming. Not too concered with upgrading video card right now. THanks.

 

[SneakyStuff]

Just wait out, the longer you wait, the nicer things you can get, for less money