Is it worth to upgrade from Pentium 4 Northwood 3.2 to E6600 now?

[imported_getaname]

I currently have a 3.2Ghz Northwood Pentium 4 on an Abit IS7 mobo, 1Gb of PC500 and a GeForce 6800Nu (worst buy ever). Should I upgrade to an E6600 + DDR2 + X1900XT right now or wait a little more? I can't seem to decide...

Thanks in advance!

 

[Maximilian]

I would wait. Although i wouldnt consider any of the next gen cards due to their power consumption id still wait just for lower prices on the current gen stuff. The geforce 8800's are out next month i think.

I would just upgrade the gcard and maybe throw in some more ram and be happy with that. The 3.2 ghz northys still a decent cpu today.

 

[easy123]

Any time is a good time to upgrade for a rig of your vintage. An E6600 will be roughly 2x as fast in everything... and an X1900XT would totally own a 6800NU...

 

[eelw]

What do you do with your computer? I moved from a 3.4 Northwood to my E6400. I can encode h.264 4-5x faster now. I will plan to move to Core 2 Quad when it drops down in price.

 

[imported_getaname]

Well, I plan to game. Can I still do it with a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz?

 

[Vizio]

Originally posted by: getaname
Well, I plan to game. Can I still do it with a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz?

Can you, yes but a Conroe and X1900XT will destroy what you have now.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Ok now this is tripping me out, I am the one that posted on the name Vizio but thats not even my account, the forums went wacky. Thats some twighlight zone sh!t there.

 

[Skott]

My old gamer is a P4 3.0GHz and I'm updating it now so yeah its a good time. Granted if you can hold off til November when the new 590 mobos with the C55 chipsets and the G8800 vid cards come out it would be better.

 

[Captante]

I would also suggest patience at the moment ... while a new C2D/X1900XT based system would destroy what you have now & also while theres always somthing faster coming out "next month", if you can hold out until G80 is released (& actually available!) prices will drop like a stone on the video card in particular, also DDR2 price are very high right now & should drop.

However if you simply can't contain yourself (we've ALL been there! ) the 6400 & the XT are about the current best choices available.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I do occasional video capture and editing, graphics, accounting, and just a wee bit of gaming on my Prescott 3.4@3.7. I just replaced the old AGP card with a LeadTek 7600GT AGP -- some would say, a waste of money when I should be building my Core 2 Duo system (definitely in the works, though). I'm pretty happy with the TrackMania Nations formula racing simulation SE version that came with the 7600GT.

I have a friend who can't help but "jump too fast." First, to supersede his Northwood 3.2C last December, he attempted to build an Athlon 64 x2 system, but it "went south" and he EBayed the components. Couldn't wait again, and got a P5WD2-E Deluxe with a PResler dual-core, but because he couldn't wait, he got the Presler rated at 135W TDP versus the 95W TDP series. Now, he's EBayed those components, trying to wait for the Kentsfield release.

I'm in no hurry at the moment, because what I want to build, whether E6700 or something more "bleeding-edge," -- is still going to cost an arm and a leg for the disk storage and some other components.

After that, then what?

 

[happy medium]

Upgrade your video and wait 4 or 5 months, you'll be fine.

 

[BladeVenom]

Memory prices suck right now; I'd wait.

 

[gramboh]

What games do you play? I have a Northwood @ 3.2 and a 6800GS AGP (unlocked to 16 pipelines). First, you should see if you can unlock your 6800NU, this will give you a nice performance boost (roughly 25%) and overclock.

I game on my PC and the only thing I play that I can't play at high detail at 1280x1024 is Oblivion which kills my rig. Prey, Q4, CS:S/DOD:S are smooth. Haven't tried CoH yet but I'm sure it will drag. The point is you can game acceptably on your current PC.

I'm waiting for the G80 Nvidia cards to be at market and for DDR2 prices to come down a bit to where they were during the summer. Then I'm going to build a E6600/2GB/GF 8800GTS system and OC the crap out of it, it will be a huge jump from this rig.

 

[Tuareg]

I'm not by any means a hardcore gamer and I'm not really a huge FPS fan, but I just ordered a 20 widescreen LCD and I would like to play some games at 1680x1050.

And yeah, if I could hold onto this system for a while more, it would be better. Maybe wait for Vista and DX10 compliant hardware, no one knows what will happen, etc...

This is such a dilemma :X