When is your next major computer upgrade?

[soccerballtux]

For those of us who can't afford to upgrade every six months, I thought this would be a fun topic.

Once quad-core chips are out and prices are acceptable, I'm thinking I'll make the jump. Possibly a dual opteron would be fun, but we'll have to see how great Conroe really is, and if AMD comes up with anything to beat it.

Also, I was thinking a RAID array of several Gigabyte i-RAM devices (or whatever they're called) would be worthwhile, coupled with a 2TB drive (if we ever get those; I'm getting tired of waiting). I was thinking of writing a script that I could assign to a button that would backup my i-RAM RAID to my actual harddrive...for vacations and for just-in-case situations.

Couple all that with top GFX of course, 8GB of ram (16 if 8 cores), and a 2nd gen 30" Apple/Dell LCD or a newer OLED display.


My main thought here, however, is.....that its going to be hard to find a reason to upgrade from that system, especially when considering normal desktop useage. Aside from gaming, nothing (but Windows of course [although Linux will be perfected for desktop use by then]) will be able to age an 8 core computer. Whats going to happen to the computing sector then? I don't think Intel can maintain their market size.

 

[JSFLY]

Im thinking of switching platforms from 939 to whatever would be availible in about a year. The conroe looks very promising, and quad cores oh my! Im looking very forward to the ensuing battle between amd and intel... the winner takes my money!

 

[VERTIGGO]

going x1900 crossfire for the summer, when I get back from Iraq I'll be looking into AM2.

 

[bob4432]

i just change as whatever i am doing at that particular time is required. sometimes a whole new build, sometimes a gpu, etc.

since i will have this lcd (1280x1024) for some time, i will probably not go a new gpu for some time as the main game i game on is bf2 and i am still doing very well.

i always try to get the best bang for the buck and am never an early adopter anymore.

 

[JBT]

Last week.

 

[hclarkjr]

motherboard, looking to replace the asrock in my signature with something that has more overclocking abilities and able to fully support my memory

 

[Pciber]

December.

For the past two years I have built a pretty much new computer in december.. just seemed like a good time. Went from an XP 2500 mobile 2 years ago to an a64 3200+ shuttle last year to an a64 4000+ mATX a few months ago. mm. This december so far i'm thinking dual-core something, better graphics (but of course), and maybe one of those raptors with a window (lolol)

 

[Jazzatola]

I'll be putting together a new system at the end of May. I've got a few weeks off work so what better way to spend it? This will be my first upgrade since July 2004 and my first complete system build since October 2002.

I've got some cash saved up and I'm planning an obsene spec this time around: dual core, SLI, widescreen LCD - the works!

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux
For those of us who can't afford to upgrade every six months, I thought this would be a fun topic.

Once quad-core chips are out and prices are acceptable, I'm thinking I'll make the jump. Possibly a dual opteron would be fun, but we'll have to see how great Conroe really is, and if AMD comes up with anything to beat it.

Also, I was thinking a RAID array of several Gigabyte i-RAM devices (or whatever they're called) would be worthwhile, coupled with a 2TB drive (if we ever get those; I'm getting tired of waiting). I was thinking of writing a script that I could assign to a button that would backup my i-RAM RAID to my actual harddrive...for vacations and for just-in-case situations.

Couple all that with top GFX of course, 8GB of ram (16 if 8 cores), and a 2nd gen 30" Apple/Dell LCD or a newer OLED display.


My main thought here, however, is.....that its going to be hard to find a reason to upgrade from that system, especially when considering normal desktop useage. Aside from gaming, nothing (but Windows of course [although Linux will be perfected for desktop use by then]) will be able to age an 8 core computer. Whats going to happen to the computing sector then? I don't think Intel can maintain their market size.

Way ahead of you with the i-ram stuff I upgrade about every three years (I make it count lol), so my next upgrade will be later this year. I'm still struggling with the backup procedure. My idea is to take 4 Gigabyte i-ram cards, couple them with 4gb ram each, then stack them in raid 0 for one giant 16gb ramdisk. One of my hesitations is that the i-ram is not SATA 2.0; if I'm going to spend $1,500 on a hard drive I want it to be the best there is lol. However, it still has pretty sick performance, so I'll see when the time comes.

As far as the backup plan goes, I have a couple ideas there. An easy (but expensive) solution is to use two 36gb Raptors in addition to the primary 16gb ramdisk drive. Using Norton Ghost, I would clone the ramdisk to one of the Raptors every night, alternating disks both to provide a redundant backup and to ensure that if the copy goes bad, I still have a backup from the previous night. This is the ideal solution because it would be extremely fast. With a cap of 16gb and the speed of the ramdisk and Raptor, a nightly backup should take no more than 20 minutes, plus the cloning feature of Ghost 2003 doesn't require you to do anything other than tell it where to clone the drive to, so you don't even have to be there. The downside is that if you get a virus, you could lose all of your data on the primary drives and both backup drives, since they are connected and always accessible inside the computer. So my next thought was to use external drives with an on/off switch so that they would only have to be accessible when you were backing up, but that would be a significant performance hit as far as backup times go. We are creatures of convenience; waiting an hour a night for backup would be pretty frustrating.

Aside from disk clones, you can always do just plain file backups. There is a free backup program from Karen's Power Tools that will let you do this easily and automatically, via scripting:

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

Right now I have a laptop with a fast 100gb hard drive in it. I use the "AB+Ghost" backup scheme, which is basically where you clone the initial XP/apps install into a Ghost folder on an external hard drive, then backup your files using Replicator nightly to either the "A" or the "B" folder. If my internal drive ever goes down, I simply restore the Ghost image to the hard drive and then copy last night's file backup over. Piece of cake. As for the ramdisk desktop system, I'd probably go with an external RAID solution, such as this 500gb raid 0 system from LaCie:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10490

That way I could turn the external hard drive on and off as I please, keep Ghost clones of the main drive on it, archive files, etc. As far as the rest of the system hardware, here's my current plan: (no OC'ing)

Antec Sonata II case with 450w psu
MSI K8N Neo4 Plantinum motherboard
Athlon FX60
Artic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro Cooling HSF
2gb Corsair value select ddr400 for the system
PCI-e 7900gt
4 Gigabyte i-ram disks
16gb Corsair value select ddr400 for the ramdisks
2 WD Raptor 36gb (nightly clones)
Large external RAID 0 backup/files/archiving drive

That would give me a dual-core 2.6ghz processor with 2gb system ram (XP SP2 will only recognize 3 gigs now, so I may go with 3, I dunno), a fast 7900gt for gaming, and a super-fast boot/apps/work-in-progress files drive with a backup system. Not cheap, but plenty powerful. Should make a nice school/work/gaming system. BTW, you can get 2tb disks, they're just not for the faint-of-wallet

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10351

 

[Fraggable]

About 6 months after Vista and DX10 vid cards come out. I'm not going to buy Vista the day it comes out, I don't need the initial problems of a new OS from MS. By 6 months after Vista is out it should be fairly obvious what vid cards have an edge and other vista-preferred hardware like 4GB ram, etc. should be a little cheaper.

 

[jeffjones66]

Just did mine yesterday. I finally got on board the PCI-e train, and got a Gigabyte SLI motherboard, and one eVGA 7900GT Superclocked. My system now has room to expand from it's current 3700+ AMD 64 to X2, from it's current 1GB ram to 2GB or more, from one 7900 to a 2nd in SLI, and from one SATA 250 to a 2nd for RAID. I should be set for awhile.

 

[meatfestival]

I'm sticking with my skt 939 system until there is a stable, mature and inexpensive platform for vista to run on (could be AM2, could be Conroe, who knows)... and also not until after the next-gen DX10 cards have gone through one or two refreshes. If there are any must-have games I might be persuaded to upgrade earlier... but I can quite safely say the only game I'll be playing in 2007 is Quake Wars

 

[techwanabe]

I made some modest upgrades to my homebrew PC recently - new P/S - jumped up from 350 to 450W. Doubled memory to 1 Gb (now running dual channal) and went from a GF4-ti4200 video card to a GF6600GT.

I'm not a heavy gamer but I like decent peformance on a shoestring.

My main rig is the Dell, and it runs pretty nice - I expect in a year I'll want to bump up the GFX card from the current Radeon X800SE to something significantly faster - apparently that card is only a little faster then the old 9800XT but it is doing the job nicely atm. (not a hug FPS gamer)