When will I *need* to upgrade?

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Right now I have a lowly t-bird 1.4 ghz, w/ 512 meg ddr, radeon 9000 pro, 40 gig drive, game theater xp, slow arse optical drive.

I've been wanting to buy a new system for awhile now, as this one is getting a lil' old, I've horrible screwed it's case (bad paint job) and it's LOUD.


I strongly feel the days of pata are over. In my next rig, I do not want to see any pata.

I can run all my current games fairly decent, although with games like HL2, and well, I guess that's it.

Questions:

1: Any processor that I absolutly must wait for if I don't really want to upgrade now?

2: Any vid card that I absolutly must wait for?

3: When are some companies going to start making sata optical drives?

4: Any mobos going to come with 4 sata headers, and/or with native support? (I do not want to have a floppy drive in the system, so that would make loading the sata drivers a little hard when installing windows..)

5: In the case that there will be no native support for sata, possible to put the drivers on a cd, and load them off a cd when windows boots? (Swap the cd in, load drivers, put win xp cd back in?)

Incase your wondering about my wanting sata. Cables. Nothing to do with speed, all in the cables. (I can't stand pata cables, I want to chop them all in half)

Thanks!

 

[everman]

If you really hate parallel ata cables, just buy some rounded ones. Try www.svc.com , they're rather inexpensive for that stuff. And you only really "need" to upgrade once you can no longer do what you need to do w/ the pc.

 

[mechBgon]

Welcome to the Forums Loading

If you want to play the next-gen games at good framerate + resolution then that's where you'll probably "need" to upgrade. The prices seem reasonable right now for moving up a notch in the motherboard/CPU/memory department, if you want to pick up something soon. Maybe an AthlonXP 2500+, an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe, two Samsung Original PC3200 512Mb DIMMs and an Antec Plus660AMG case with the nice TruePower 330 power supply (this case looks sharp with black drives).

If you like cases with a window, you could pick from quite a few Antec-alikes or the Antec PlusView 1000 and then pick a high-quality power supply to go with it.

The board has two SATA jacks and you can add more with a PCI SATA card if you want. You're probably not going to be free of PATA for another six to eight months, is my guess, because optical drives with an SATA interface are not out yet, as far as I know.

 

[Davegod]

When will I *need* to upgrade?

when programs you want to use on your computer wont work properly because they dont have enough power to work with.

can run all my current games fairly decent, although with games like HL2, and well, I guess that's it.

Wait until HL2 before you upgrade. You'll get a LOT more power for the same $. It can be hard to resist when u get upgraditis, but thats still a ok setup and you'll be happy you waited rather than it coming up to september/november and youre finding yourself getting stuttery play in Half Life 2, even without all the candy maxed.


Spot on reccomendation for a "now" upgrade by mechBgon tho (good case too, but also have an eye on the Lanboy). Something you can consider in the meantime is a bit of overclocking, though cant say i know if the 9000 or a 1.4athloon will go far; but whacking a bit of custom cooling on my GF3ti200 let me overclock around 1500 more 3d marks (thats quite an oc even for a pretty good overclocking card though). The thing is, if you were going to upgrade anyway, it doesnt matter much if you damage something you were going to replace, aslong as your in a position where you can go buy the new stuff whenever, can go without the comp for a few days, and dont have half finished essays sitting on the drive much - be extra careful about the stuff you want to keep.

 

[bendixG15]

Like the rest of us...when you find the money

 

[Corporate Thug]

wait for 9600 pro to upgrade