the right time to buy a new pc?

[Xzero17]

i want to buy a new pc but i dont know if i should buy one right now or wait after xmas or before xmas.

what should i do?

the prices will drop in xmas or will be more expensive?

my budget is $1200-1500

 

[Muscles]

I'm in the same boat as you pretty much. I'm buying a new system with a $1500 or so budget for Quake 4. The only thing I'm waiting on is the R520 to see if it outperforms the 7800GTX. At the very least, even if the R520 sucks it should bring prices down a little or cause some good deals to emerge.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Generally things are going to continue to slowly drop in price. I don't know why things would be more expensive around Christmas.

I don't think it's a bad time to build a computer now.

Is the $1200/$1500 for the whole thing including monitor etc or just the computer itself?

If it's just the computer, you might want to wait to see if R520 changes anything, but if that's for your whole system I don't think it would have much effect on something in your budget.

More importantly... is your computer now not doing something you want it to do now?

 

[superfly27]

I think anyone will always be disatistfied. Just buy a good case, power supply, hard drive and DVD burner.
Next, the other components you get, try to get best bang for your buck.

I'll tell you what I did although I know many people would disagree. I got a 3400+ 2.4 GHz because I thought that's the best bang for the buck. Then I got an X700 Pro because I thought that was the best bang for the buck.

So, I could always switch to dual core when socket M2 comes out.

But, you could choose a socket 939 to for dual core compatibility later. The odd thing is, you end up buying two chips for the same board if you don't buy a dual core right now.

 

[mOeeOm]

Originally posted by: Muscles
I'm in the same boat as you pretty much. I'm buying a new system with a $1500 or so budget for Quake 4. The only thing I'm waiting on is the R520 to see if it outperforms the 7800GTX. At the very least, even if the R520 sucks it should bring prices down a little or cause some good deals to emerge.

If you are building a comp for that game, actually wait for it to come out to see some benchmarks and know what you really need.

 

[mOeeOm]

Originally posted by: Xzero17
i want to buy a new pc but i dont know if i should buy one right now or wait after xmas or before xmas.

what should i do?

the prices will drop in xmas or will be more expensive?

my budget is $1200-1500

Definitely wait for ATI's new cards, but ya during christmas there will obviously be more sales and lower prices. If you can't wait that long, just wait for a big sale then buy.

 

[xeodragon]

prices won't drastically drop till xmas, i'd wait it out if i could.

 

[raildogg]

if you have enough money to buy, buy now. if something new comes along, just upgrade.

be sure to buy components now that are upgradeable. the first step is to buy a 939 socket motherboard for future X2s. the second step is PCI-E for future graphics cards.

prices of components that have been out for a while will go down as newer components arrive. but a Radeon X800GT will still be fast no matter what new graphics card comes out, for example.

so yes, buy now

 

[Crism]

Whats in your existing computer? I'm running on a P4-B 2.53GHz @ 3GHz, 1GB Corsair w/ TCCD, 9800Pro AGP, and IT7-MAX2 v2 board without AGP 8x and Dual Channel RAM...it's lasting so I'm going to wait it out till Christmas. I just priced out upgrades on Newegg and it's $1252 at the moment.