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Is this a good time to buy?

S

SSUSeaWolf

Senior member
Looking to build a new computer to upgrade from my Athlon XP 2500+.

The i7 860 looks to be like an ideal CPU, but I'm wondering if this is actually a good time to buy. There's usually price drops after holidays to keep spending up in the slower months. Anyone have any ideas on whether or not I should wait a while to upgrade?
 
Heya,

Now is a good time actually. Intel CPU's don't get cheaper over time. Look at the 6600, 9550, etc. Still in the same ball park. Makes i7 920 all the more sensible.

The only thing that is not good right now, price wise, is RAM. RAM is twice what it was about a year ago. But nothing will change on this front for a long time since lots of new markets are eating up RAM these days, it will do nothing but stay expensive.

Very best,
 
MalVeauX said:
Heya,

Now is a good time actually. Intel CPU's don't get cheaper over time. Look at the 6600, 9550, etc. Still in the same ball park. Makes i7 920 all the more sensible.

The only thing that is not good right now, price wise, is RAM. RAM is twice what it was about a year ago. But nothing will change on this front for a long time since lots of new markets are eating up RAM these days, it will do nothing but stay expensive.

Very best,
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. What are your thoughts on video cards? Seems that the 5000 series are too expensive/low supply. Are the 4000 series prices staying artificially high too until 5000 series supplies bounce back?
 
The only thing that would make people wait right now would be Sata 6gb (from 3gb), and USB 3.0. These are minor and there's limited items that take advantage of these faster speeds. For example, if you go on Newegg and search for Sata 6GB hard drives, you'll find one, a Seagate 2TB drive.

It depends on what games you want to play.

My 939 FX53 machine died, was going to build a new one, but just found out that a game I've been playing for years called Tribes2 doesn't play well on the new processors. Older games that ran on single processors can have problems with a quad, so that's a huge bummer to me and now I'm looking to fix my old machine buying the same MB (Asus AV8) from someone in the FS forums for $30.
 
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SSUSeaWolf said:
There's usually price drops after holidays to keep spending up in the slower months.
Click to expand...
"Price drops" on CPU's or components in general?
Is there any empirical evidence proving out the "after holidays price decline" theory for CPU's, HD's, MB's, RAM, etc?

If you need the parts now and have the cash on hand... Buy Now.
There's no need playing the waiting game with prices on hardware so reasonable.
The fact is that in a year the i7 860 will be cheaper, but if you hold out until then, you won't want an i7 860, you'll want something faster... etc... etc... etc...
 
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Blain said:
"Price drops" on CPU's or components in general?
Is there any empirical evidence proving out the "after holidays price decline" theory for CPU's, HD's, MB's, RAM, etc?

If you need the parts now and have the cash on hand... Buy Now.
There's no need playing the waiting game with prices on hardware so reasonable.
The fact is that in a year the i7 860 will be cheaper, but if you hold out until then, you won't want an i7 860, you'll want something faster... etc... etc... etc...
Click to expand...

My reference was to commodities in general, not specifically computer related items. February is traditionally the slowest month, from what I've learned.

I suppose the question is if the i7 860 will be surpassed with ease in the near future, somewhat negating my purchase.
 
imported_NoGodForMe said:
The only thing that would make people wait right now would be Sata 6gb (from 3gb), and USB 3.0. These are minor and there's limited items that take advantage of these faster speeds. For example, if you go on Newegg and search for Sata 6GB hard drives, you'll find one, a Seagate 2TB drive.

It depends on what games you want to play.

My 939 FX53 machine died, was going to build a new one, but just found out that a game I've been playing for years called Tribes2 doesn't play well on the new processors. Older games that ran on single processors can have problems with a quad, so that's a huge bummer to me and now I'm looking to fix my old machine buying the same MB (Asus AV8) from someone in the FS forums for $30.
Click to expand...

Can you just upgrade and disable the additional cores? I had my Dual Core 939 CPU die and a replacement mobo was too expensive at $100, but I was able to sell my old CPU + RAM for $150 on eBay.
 
JimKiler said:
Can you just upgrade and disable the additional cores? I had my Dual Core 939 CPU die and a replacement mobo was too expensive at $100, but I was able to sell my old CPU + RAM for $150 on eBay.
Click to expand...

Don't know about disabling cores. The parts are only going for $30 on Ebay and the FS forums. Amazing. Paid $550 for the processor (FX53), now $30. MB is going for $30. Basically the entire computer was state of the art 5 years ago, now worth dinner money. Parents already have my previous computers, my first is sitting in the corner of the room as a memorabilia item. No new games have come along that make me want to upgrade. Played L4D2 demo, but wasn't hooked.

So in short, I think it comes down to having a need, like a cool game or app that needs more power. Lucky for me, I got everything off the machine before it died. If you don't have a need, then wait, because yes, something bigger will come along in a few months. The current processors have been out for a year.
 
In general, buy now. The overall economy will see rises in commodity prices over the next year, and soon we will start seeing some inflation compared to a flat 2009. When that happens, all prices should rise. The relative value of the dollar also impacts imported electronics prices.
 
I think it a poor time to upgrade.
Gpu's are overpriced with little competition.
Memory is still priced high and ddr2 is going through the roof.
New cpu's were just released and prices havent stablized IMO.
Motherboards are getting usb 3.0 and sata 6gb. Might want to see what comes with Fusion on board also for crossfire and sli.
Solid State Drives are still very high price per gb.

The good news is psu's are nicely priced.

I'd wait till around March/April.
 
Heya,

SATA 6Gb is pointless to even mention. You need a drive that is capable of saturating even today's current SATA 3Gb channels. Only the top SSD's can do it right now and even then, only just. Worry about this in two years when SSD's are more common place and way faster than they are now. Normal HDD's simply do not come close to even filling SATA 1.5's channel, let alone 3. So this 6 channel, well, don't hold your breath. It's like having 10 cores in a CPU and nothing that actually can do anything with it that is practical.

USB3 is actually a neat thing. USB speeds are no longer good anymore for today's devices. eSATA is great. But if USB3 can come along and essentially just be an even easier to use, universal, same-practical-transfer speeds as-eSATA then it's a good thing. But you can add it as a card too. No need to wait for a motherboard with this.

GPU's have gone up. Yes. But not by a tremendous amount. It's not like they're double. A $20 raise in price for that one card you're going to buy isn't the end of the market. The HD4870 in the $150 range is still a great buy, as is the HD5770 in the $160 range. The GTX260 is also in that range, unless you get the 216 version which is closer to $180 right now. And of course, the HD4850 and 9800GT are both in the $100 range, should budget demand. Less than that, and well, an onboard IGP can pretty much do it so don't look for something discrete.

CPUs are stable as hell price wise. Intel hasn't dropped prices on their oldy goldies hardly at all. Q6600 and 9550? Still nearly the same price after years. The new stuff? Only a few bucks more. I mean, that's ridiculous. You clearly should be buying new stuff. These prices are nuts for what you get today. Our CPU's are so far ahead of what we even can use it's just silly. No one needs server grade i7's right now for home, especially not gaming and all. These CPU's are cheap for what they actually are. Quads in general are cheap for what they are. Now is a great time to buy a new mobo/Quad. Both Intel and AMD.

Very best, 🙂
 
MalVeauX said:
Heya,

SATA 6Gb is pointless to even mention. You need a drive that is capable of saturating even today's current SATA 3Gb channels. Only the top SSD's can do it right now and even then, only just. Worry about this in two years when SSD's are more common place and way faster than they are now. Normal HDD's simply do not come close to even filling SATA 1.5's channel, let alone 3. So this 6 channel, well, don't hold your breath. It's like having 10 cores in a CPU and nothing that actually can do anything with it that is practical.

USB3 is actually a neat thing. USB speeds are no longer good anymore for today's devices. eSATA is great. But if USB3 can come along and essentially just be an even easier to use, universal, same-practical-transfer speeds as-eSATA then it's a good thing. But you can add it as a card too. No need to wait for a motherboard with this.

GPU's have gone up. Yes. But not by a tremendous amount. It's not like they're double. A $20 raise in price for that one card you're going to buy isn't the end of the market. The HD4870 in the $150 range is still a great buy, as is the HD5770 in the $160 range. The GTX260 is also in that range, unless you get the 216 version which is closer to $180 right now. And of course, the HD4850 and 9800GT are both in the $100 range, should budget demand. Less than that, and well, an onboard IGP can pretty much do it so don't look for something discrete.

CPUs are stable as hell price wise. Intel hasn't dropped prices on their oldy goldies hardly at all. Q6600 and 9550? Still nearly the same price after years. The new stuff? Only a few bucks more. I mean, that's ridiculous. You clearly should be buying new stuff. These prices are nuts for what you get today. Our CPU's are so far ahead of what we even can use it's just silly. No one needs server grade i7's right now for home, especially not gaming and all. These CPU's are cheap for what they actually are. Quads in general are cheap for what they are. Now is a great time to buy a new mobo/Quad. Both Intel and AMD.

Very best, 🙂
Click to expand...

I share opinions on most of what you wrote.

And fusion? Important?
 
happy medium said:
And fusion? Important?
Click to expand...

Not at all,

We've been overclocking forever already. AMD simply made it even easier by giving unlocked multiplier cpu's (Black Editions) and their own overclocking tools for it (AMD Overdrive). And we've had RivaTuner forever for overclocking GPU's. So now they're giving you the option to do both at the same time with a single program, that is theirs, instead of two. Well, ok. That's not something to wait on. That already exists. They're just making it mainstream easy to have an underclocked system (think quiet n cool) that can be overclocked instantly upon command to juice it up. This is a response to the i5 turbo basically. I wouldn't wait on it. Most overclockers use software like this already to tone down the overclock when its not needed to conserve their electric bill. You have two profiles. One that is overclocked. One that is normal or underclocked. You load the profile you want to use. Same idea behind a fusion icon that overclocks for you.

Very best, 🙂
 
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