When do you upgrade?

[fsstrike]

When do you guys feel its time to upgrade? When video card are 10% better than what u have, or when they are 100% better than what you have? I feel its time to upgrade when its more than 100% so that you truely get ur moneys worth. Back in 2001 I spend about 700 including tax for my geforce3, and its still OK today.

 

[Corporate Thug]

here is my upgrade in recent past: geforce 2mx -> 9700 pro -> 9800 pro (it was a free upgrade, my friend took my 9700pro and gave a 9800 pro for putting together a system for him) -> nv40/R420

i try to do it once every new generation of cards

 

[RussianSensation]

every OTHER generation of videocards (So Radeon 8500 => X800/6800)
When CPU speed DOUBLES

every other component is not a necessity but a luxury (assuming you start with a decent power supply and monitor)

So I am more with you about 100% improvement at least, or unless something is really cheap. The funniest thing when ppl upgrade from PC2100 to PC4000 ram expecting amazing speed difference, when it's not happening. You should leave upgrading the ram for as long as you can as it's the least important part of the system (unless you have PC133 hehe) Of course what i mean by that is RAM speed to a degree and not ram size which matters, speed almost doesn't. Also some things are less important to upgrade like from KT266/333/400/600 to nforce 2 chipset alone will give you 2-3% performance increase tops unless you plan on going above 200FSB, making that upgrade worthless. It's all relevant to what you want. Some ppl will laugh at me and say every 25% is a must to upgrade for them; so everyone is different.

And also a rule of thumb, any speed increase between 0 and 10% is not noticeable by the human eye so going from 9700Pro to 9800Pro is a waste unless you get a good deal like Shady06 did. So don't try to keep up with everyone just to have the best and the fastest all the time. You have to realize some ppl spend everything they got for extra 5-10% improvement but is that worth spending 2x the amount of money? In terms of return on your investment, no. So if you are happy with your current components who cares what others have right?

 

[MDE]

I upgrade when my current hardware can't play newer games with most of the bells and whistles on.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Februrary. I drop a lot of money on my kids for Christmas and usually talk my wife out of getting me anything so I don't get any toys for the holidays. After the holidays have all settled down I usually am dealing with a lot of extra work which tends to slow down around the beginning of February. Due to my complete refusal to except a salraied position I make a hefty chunk of extra coin in January every year which then gets turned around in to computer upgrades.

Usually no matter how much extra I make I try to limit my upgrade to the ~$1,500 mark per year(went to $1,800 this year). What I do is analyze my rig and try to upgrade whatever I need the most or would pay the most dividends. This year the graphics card was in dire need(Ti4200->R9800Pro- but I'm usually in 'dire need' of a vid upgrade every year), I crushed my 2100 but that wasn't doing to bad with a bit of an OC(->2500), meant to pick up RAM but never got around to it and it wasn't that big of a deal(running 512MB). Stuck with my existing mobo(K7N2, nF2) and picked up a bit more HD space(was running 80GB+20GB now I'm running 80GB+120GB in my main rig) and decided to focus on durable externals- monitor(NEC-19" to uber NEC 22") and audio(Audigy2 and Sennheiser 500series cans) which chewed up $1K of my upgrade money and also moved to XP.

Next year- new mobo, RAM, processor, vid card and likely a 'dual head' phase change cooling solution. I'll probably go $2K-$2.5K this coming year, I already pretty much have my wife convinced that picking up a high end vid card and processor paired with a phase change cooling solution and serious OC will be a better long term solution(thank gawd she appreciates my warped logic ).

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: MDE
I upgrade when my current hardware can't play newer games with most of the bells and whistles on.

Same here... I could care less what generation my card is as long as it plays the game I want to play at what I consider a satisfactory rate.

 

[KenSimone]

Same here... I could care less what generation my card is as long as it plays the game I want to play at what I consider a satisfactory rate.

Ditto. My two year old ti4200 ($99 bucks after rebate at the time) still seems adequate (1280x1024 no AA or AF is fine with me). I keep expecting to be forced into an upgrade, but so far nothing has pushed me to that point.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

when cash is burning a hole in my pocket and when I find a good deal.

 

[Viper96720]

When I got the money to upgrade. Next won't be for a few years probably.

 

[BFG10K]

Usually I try to get at least a 30% gain in GPU or CPU limited situations before upgrading. More is always better.

When I upgrade always get the best or very close to the best CPU and GPU available at the time.

 

[SneakyStuff]

I upgrade when a game that I want requires me to, Warcraft III was my motivation to replace my good ol' PIII 450 MHz tower. Pretty soon, I'm gonna do so again, for stuff like DoomIII, i'm just waiting on VIA, and SiS's AGP/PCI-E chipsets, so I can use my 5700u while I wait for PCI-E cards.

 

[howdyduty]

Upgrade every year or when you can sell your stuff for a good price (about 3/4 what you paid). Always look for the buyer of your old to finance the new.

 

[nRollo]

I upgrade my motherboard/cpu once a year, don't "waste" money on the top end go a few rungs below as the difference isn't great and I'll be upgrading in a year anyway.

Video card are different, I don 't even always "upgrade". In 2002 I went from GF3 >8500>V5>GF4 4400>9700Pro. Last year I went from 9700Pro>5800 NU> 9800Pro.
This year I've gone from 9800Pro to 5800Ultra, and I will keep that forever because it is my precious. (lol- couldn't resist throwing that in for BFG!)

I'll probably get a 6800/6800U/x800/x800XT when the benchmarks shake out, as I don't change video cards near as much as I used to due to other costly hobbies like parenting. I've never spent $500 on a card, but don't like to think of the number of times I've spent $350-$400, lot of money down the rathole on a component that becomes out dated within a year oftentimes. The 9700Pro was a true exception to this, if not for the boredom of having the same card for months on end, I would hav e been more than happy with it's performance for the last year and a half.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: howdyduty
Upgrade every year or when you can sell your stuff for a good price (about 3/4 what you paid). Always look for the buyer of your old to finance the new.

Good luck with that if you buy top end or close to it when it comes out. Let's see, I bought my 9800 Pro in July 2003 for $372 art newegg, for the last month or two they've been selling for about $220. When should I have sold it for 3/4? In August 2003?

 

[Jeff7181]

One way to avoid upgrading is not to play new games... play games that are at least a year old, then you'll be perfectly happy with a $500-750 rig of last generation hardware

 

[Woohah]

Yeah these guys are pretty much on the mark. Another thing to try is to do things in stages, as some stuff will be at the best price-performance point at different times than others. For example, you may only want to drop $200 on a cpu, which should get you about 3-4 iterations down from the "top of the line". I did this in nov. with a p4 2.8. A 2.6 at the time was $180, but a 3.0 was at least $275. On the other hand a 2.4 was literally $179, so 2.6 was a no-brainer.

Video is usually the toughest to do this way, because everything changes so quickly (at also very slowly). For the last several years, pretty much every game out there used very similar engines and algorithms, so it was just a matter of doing the same thing faster, but now a new generation of games is emerging and nobody knows what will work well. So a year ago one could decide on a dollar amount and do just fine. Right now, though, you could pay $500 for a 9800XT and still not be able to do all the features on up and coming games.

For some perspective I started with a p3 500 in 1999 with ATA66, 128mb, and a TNT2. I added another 128mb, a 40GB HD, a 32x CDR, 5.1 sound, and a G3 ti200. I got the ti200 a few months after the g4 series was released (Summer 02?) for about $150 (it was as low as $130 at the time). Last november (2003), I did a big upgrade to P4 2.8, 1gb Ram, new mobo, sata HD, case, CDR---Everything except video, particularly since everyone was still saying HL2 was going to change EVERYTHING. I'm still using my G3ti200 with limited success- the rest of the computer makes up for the shortcomings - and when I do get a card I can throw a little more at it.

Hope that helps.

 

[MichaelZ]

when i feel like it.

 

[biostud]

Diamond stealth 64 2Mb -> Matrox Mystique 220 -> Voodoo II 8mb -> Voodoo II 8mb SLI -> Geforce2 32Mb -> Geforce4 128Mb -> 9800Pro 128Mb

Basically I upgrade when I can get a good next generation card for around $250 max, this happens usually around the time when the new features are actually seen in games on the shelves.

 

[bandana163]

486DX80 - P133 - Celeron466 - CeleronT1300 - P4 2800C
At least 100% increase in raw speed.

Tseng ET6000 + VooDoo2 - GF2 MX - GF3 Ti200 - FX5900XT
I get the value version of the actual "best" card. I bought a Ti200 when the best card was the GF3, bought a GF2MX when the GF2 GTS kicked ass...

I try to make big jumps. High-end hardware is not as necessary nowadays as it was 3-4 years ago. Nothing really needs a 9800XT or an Athlon FX.

I'll most likely get one of the second generation PCI-X cards and skip Intel's 915 chipset as well. They try to implement too many new technologies, but the real performance gain will not be worth the price, IMO.

 

[Atomsmasher544]

Went from a 400 mhz celeron, voodoo banshee, 256mb ram to a 600 celeron, geforce 2 MX. Then when I could finally afford non-value parts, went to a p4 2 ghz, Geforce 4 TI4400, 512mb ram then just got the system listed below about 3 weeks ago.

 

[ProviaFan]

I upgrade whenever my current video card is not working well any more to do the tasks that I need to do. Since those tasks generally amount to Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc., I'm still (relatively) happily using my ATI Radeon SDR PCI. However, since ATI has decided that they wanted to do color management seppuku and give us digital darkroom enthusiasts the finger in their recent drivers, I'm thinking about a Matrox P650 or Parhelia for my next upgrade, whenever that happens (probably whenever I get some extra money burning a hole in my pocket).

 

[CraigRT]

I upgrade when the GPU can no longer play games with 100% smoothness

if it requires not running the game at huge resolutions that's OK

just as long as 1280x1024 is still smooth I won't upgrade

 

[Genx87]

I try to do it on an 18 month cycle. Funny thing is the last time I did an upgrade 1 year ago it was only a 12 month cycle and the next round looks like it could be upwards of 24 months unless a game comes down the pipe that kills my system.

 

[SneakyStuff]

I have gotten used to 1024 x 768 for all my gaming needs, that affords me the chance to turn on a little AA/AF every now and then The upgrade path i'll prolly take is to get a P4 2.53 GHz, and get another exhaust fan from Dell so my system runs quiet again. Any ideas on how a 533 MHz FSB P4 would run with PC2100 RAM?

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I upgrade when a. part dies b. I run into a game I can't play. Oddly enough both tend to happen at the same time... hsf, 2 harddrives, and video card went to crap all around the same time and I couldn't play halo on my last computer so I upgraded.