Who's struggling to justify upgrading their CPU?

[DominionSeraph]

How long till the retail on the DDR2 LGA775 gets knocked down to reasonable?

Doubt any time soon. The thing is, it's good enough. C2D is still one hell of an upgrade for the millions out there still on P4's, as is C2Q over C2D. They're valuable for upgrades and they're priced that way.

 

[smakme7757]

Doubt any time soon. The thing is, it's good enough. C2D is still one hell of an upgrade for the millions out there still on P4's, as is C2Q over C2D. They're valuable for upgrades and they're priced that way.

It's also worth noting that when PC parts become rare they usually go up in price rather than down, if they are being sold 'as new'. I'd say C2D/Q are at very resonable prices now, but i'd imagine their price slowly creeping up as they become harder to find.

One of the reason i moved from my Q9450 to my new 2600K was because my DDR2 ram died and (here in Norway at least) buying a nice new kit of DDR3 was cheaper than replacing the dead DDR2.

 

[ShadowVVL]

C2D/Q are expensive in price/performance compared to SB and even phenom II chips are better buy then C2Q atm.
I paid $219 for my q9550 2 years ago and now it retails for $329
@newegg
PII x4 955 is $139

C2Q 8400 is 169


sb or bd would be the best upgrades

 

[jibberegg]

ON TOPIC: I finally itched that upgrade bug and went from an E8500 to Core i7 2600K. Very pleased with the upgrade (although I should have got the 2500k; I know, I know...) but I wonder when the next upgrade will be justified. I run F@H and do enjoy the extra e-penis effect, but how long will it be before I can expect a 2x improvement on applications with 4 or less threads? GHz wall doesn't look impenetrable what with 2500k/2600k going to 4.5GHz, but when is 6/7GHz going to be a reality?

OFF TOPIC:
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[Smartazz]

If I can run Crysis 2 on high with my current rig, then I'm not going to upgrade until at least Battlefield 3. In terms of non gaming performance, a 3.33GHz Q6600 with a solid state is very comfortable for everything I do.

 

[Deanodarlo]

Some great feedback from everyone. Didn't expect so many who feel the same.

Thanks for everyone's opinions.

 

[SickBeast]

I'm thinking about selling my Phenom II X4 and getting an X6. It would probably end up costing me $70 or so. I'm not sure if it's worth it or if I should just wait for Bulldozer to come out and see what happens to the prices on the Thubans.

 

[exar333]

I'm thinking about selling my Phenom II X4 and getting an X6. It would probably end up costing me $70 or so. I'm not sure if it's worth it or if I should just wait for Bulldozer to come out and see what happens to the prices on the Thubans.

It is a nice bump in performance for heavily-threaded applications but would be negligable in games or other more single-threaded uses. I would say wait for BD and see what happens.

 

[podspi]

I'm thinking about selling my Phenom II X4 and getting an X6. It would probably end up costing me $70 or so. I'm not sure if it's worth it or if I should just wait for Bulldozer to come out and see what happens to the prices on the Thubans.

If you're gaming, its not worth it. If you're doing encoding or running VMs, the X6 is awesome.

Say what you will about per-core performance, being able to run four VMs at full utilization without any CPU-bottleneck is awesome.

 

[jiffylube1024]

How long till the retail on the DDR2 LGA775 gets knocked down to reasonable?

Its a little ridiculous seeing Q6600's on eBay used get bid to $130. Especially when the boards are ridiculous, DDR2 4gb modules cost a fortune, and someone could typically be on a new DDR3 platform simply by selling off their old gear in many cases. Its absurd.

DDR2 prices are plateauing or going up, not down. The industry has shifted (almost overly) to DDR3, and this is what inevitably happens to the previous generation.

If you're building a new system, a DDR3 based system is much more reasonable, as you can get a cheap CPU and mobo from AMD or go higher end from either company.

------

People buy C2Q's to upgrade their existing LGA 775 setups, and are willing to pay a premium for an easy drop-in upgrade.

 

[spdfreak]

How long till the retail on the DDR2 LGA775 gets knocked down to reasonable?

Its a little ridiculous seeing Q6600's on eBay used get bid to $130. Especially when the boards are ridiculous, DDR2 4gb modules cost a fortune, and someone could typically be on a new DDR3 platform simply by selling off their old gear in many cases. Its absurd.

I have a Q6600 and MSI P6N SLI board that I can't figure out what to do with... I guess ebay is where it is going.
Along the line of the original thread, I upgraded from the Q6600 @ 2.8 to a 1075X6 @ 3.5. No doubt the X6 is much, much faster at transcoding movies and stuff I record off TV to MKV files. But, for any kind of daily office tasks, there is no way you can tell any difference.

 

[JimKiler]

What I would like to know is how come when we got our first +1GHz machines they were fast and now buying a netbook with a 1.6GHz CPU is slow, when did 1.6GHz become slow?

 

[toyota]

What I would like to know is how come when we got our first +1GHz machines they were fast and now buying a netbook with a 1.6GHz CPU is slow, when did 1.6GHz become slow?

go use that old cpu now and see if its sufficient for modern tasks. 256mb of memory was plenty at one time you know...

 

[Maximilian]

What I would like to know is how come when we got our first +1GHz machines they were fast and now buying a netbook with a 1.6GHz CPU is slow, when did 1.6GHz become slow?

Well a few things make that 1.6ghz slow today:

- Atom is crap, if its not atom and its a CULV then i take that back, my CULV has never been slow however and its 1.1 ghz i think

- Modern OS's need more resources

- Fancy moving internet ads and HD video takes more horsepower

 

[Dean]

I know exactly what you mean. 2 years ago I purchased a new E8400 rig. It still runs fast and top notch. Yes I have recently purchased a new SB rig (has not arrived yet), but only because my wife promised our son my current one as his machine is ready for retirement.

I am still very happy with this machine. It continues to run everything I throw at it just fine,

 

[looper]

Same situation as OP. 775/Core 2 cpu E8400. This is the very heavy gaming rig for son and me.

Play BBC2/multi-player every day. New version in the Fall.

Get SB/i5 now, or wait 'til end of Summer, for what? Something better for FPS gaming coming soon?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Me. Except that's exactly what I want. I bought this system knowing that it would set me back much more than I would have liked, but also that it would last me a long, long time. I don't game much anymore, and I don't know how long it's going to take to make me 'need' to upgrade my computer. Contrast that with my last system, where I could feel the need to upgrade after 1 1/2 years. It's already been two years and this computer is still going strong.

 

[Avalon]

I've been struggling with justifying an upgrade for a while, being as I have an E8400 @ 4Ghz, 4GB ram, and a Radeon 4850 running on a 22" Dell at 1680x1050. But, some of these newer games are starting to chug a bit at high settings. It really gives me the upgrade itch...lol.

 

[JBT]

I am considering it but, honestly I think I will be waiting for he next Gen CPU's. I had a Q6600 at 3.1 Ghz and now a E6850 at 3.7 and don't notice much difference for what I do. I pretty much just play MMO's and BF:BC2 and I think the performance is fine. I've seen the reviews, and im sure it would be faster, but what I have now is delivering acceptable frame rate for the games I'm playing.

 

[Barfo]

I'll only upgrade when I can get double my current performance for $350 (including CPU, MB and RAM). Or even later if I'm still happy with my rig, which is quite possible.

 

[FordGT]

Would I like to have a new 2600K? Sure, but not at $330. I got my Q6600 for $219 and maybe when Sandy Bridge comes down a bit I will upgrade but why spend the money when I don't really need it?

I just overclocked my Q6600 to 3Ghz for the heck of it a few weeks ago and it is damn quick. My Q6600 is still more than I need on a daily basis and in no way is it a bottleneck for the games I play or Photoshop work I do. I will keep my current system for at least the next year.

 

[SickBeast]

Would I like to have a new 2600K? Sure, but not at $330. I got my Q6600 for $219 and maybe when Sandy Bridge comes down a bit I will upgrade but why spend the money when I don't really need it?

I just overclocked my Q6600 to 3Ghz for the heck of it a few weeks ago and it is damn quick. My Q6600 is still more than I need on a daily basis and in no way is it a bottleneck for the games I play or Photoshop work I do. I will keep my current system for at least the next year.

It would probably double your current performance, however for you it would probably be better to go with an 8 core Bulldozer.

If you try Starcraft 2 I'm sure you will find that you're bottlenecked by your CPU, BTW. Most games I agree though, you should be fine for the time being.

 

[Ken g6]

A couple of weeks ago my second motherboard for my Q9400 died. I had to decide this past weekend whether to upgrade to a 2500K and sell off my existing parts, or just get a new board. For a number of reasons, I just got a new board. Two of them were that the Z chipset isn't out yet, and that I'd like to see what a 22nm process can do.

I should add that in the past I've upgraded only once every 5 years or so. My last upgrade was late, but that would still put my next one at January 2013 at the earliest.

 

[SickBeast]

A Q9400 is still a very respectable CPU. I probably would have gone with a new motherboard as well. The expense pales in comparison to dropping $200-350 on a SB CPU.

Why do you keep going through motherboards though? That would concern me. You might want to check out your PSU and possibly even replace it as a precaution, and just to have it for your next build.

 

[Ken g6]

1st one died because I scratched it trying to insert a GPU. The second one seemed a little flaky from the start. OTOH it also had a 51-day uptime. PSU is a Corsair; it's hard to be sure, but I kind of doubt that's the problem.