Well... there have been excellent times to upgrade and then there is now. There was a little bit of a lull in the CPU market that kind of hindered forward progress and if you bought during the early portion of that time period, you could expect a long-term run on your investment.

As it is, new technologies on their way include USB 3, eight-core processors, and another bump to PCI-X. DDR3 is now roaming the earth and it's only a matter of time before eventually every decides Vista isn't a TOTAL waste and DX 10 starts catching on.

I remember when technology was moving damn fast. Pentium became PII, PIII and PIV in a fairly short space. I remember when the Cyrix 686 stood supreme (for being a total POS) as one of the fastest CPUs on the market. I remember when I had a rig right on the cutting edge and aside from a little money dumped into the video card, it's lasted a good, long time!

RAM, Slots, CPU, Video Cards and the like are moving pretty fast again, and it's looking like the investment into a dual core could leave you a sad little kid by next Christmas. I might suggest getting a quad-core board at the very least. Still, technology moves forward at a "Majority" pace. It seems that most people upgrade their PCs when they encounter a problem they can't solve (cheaper to replace than fix in some people's opinions) and/or a certain game offers stellar graphics IF you have the right bits. How fast will the next generation be accepted? I can see definite uses for USB 3 (although lord knows how long it will take to get USB 3 devices) and PCI-X seems to be the new AGP (my old 750Mhz Dell has a AGP 1x slot, my current motherboard only supports 4x AGP and my video card is 8x AGP... oh what a world!)
So, hopefully the next PCI-X will be backwards compatible for awhile...

I remember when I bought and assembled my 1.5Ghz P-IV (parted it out to my father so he could get his machine back up) and my AMD Athlon 1800+. My computer will now run exactly SQUAT, but I had a good five year run. Not too shabby! This time, I'm not looking at a processor speed that is just under cutting edge, I'm looking at how many cores I can afford. Quad Core is the current power-beast, but it's already in the shadow of a new technology looming in the near future.

Still, how long can a person hold out? I've hit the point where I can't really wait too much longer, but how long will an upgrade last at this point? How many cores can be packed into a silicon wafer and called good? How much more speed can a motherboard move and how much more heat can be displaced?

Time will tell...

Completely in agreement. There is never really a good time to upgrade because some technology is right around the corner, but right now is not a good time for a major investment in a complete overhaul. There are new chipsets, CPU's, new RAM standards, new PCI standards, etc... that are real close to either being rolled out or close to becoming mainstream. DDR3 is getting the speed it needs to overcome latency issues, CPU's will be more efficient with new materials inside, and chipsets are gaining new capabilities. I think the only safe bet is to upgrade your sound system. A graphics upgrade isn't unreasonable right now but I think ATI/AMD is a dark horse who may have something up their sleeve. They need a home run to stay competitive. Time will tell.

I'm still on my Socket A xp2600 LAN PARTY machine. Built with all top of the line components back in the day, and with a little help from a Pimprig Corsair XMS RAM giveaway, it has lasted me so long.

It will be four years old this January. I am not upgrading any time soon, probably not for another 6 months. My machine does everything I need it to and it does it flawlessly. No issues whatsoever.

I might just for fun do a couple minor upgrades to it, like an XP3200 and maybe a beefier graphics card, and another hard drive, but other than that this machine has lasted me for a long time and I definitely got my money's worth when I built it.

I think it's a "Right now" versus "right 3 months from now" thing though, especially if you're talking about stock performance.

DDR3 is underwhelming until you get to like 1200MHz; do the DDR3 boards currently out even support this in a non-overclocked fashion?

And even if DDR3 hits it big, it looks like G33/P35/X38 boards with DDR2 should be entirely capable of holding us through until Intel goes integrated-memory-controller. I figure a mainboard's done me well if it lasts through one CPU upgrade, and I could definitely see 45nm quad-core being a very valid upgrade.

And still, the price premium on it makes it a joke. For the *cheapest* 2Gb of DDR3 on Newegg right now, you can get *8Gb* of DDR2-800 and have change! That's Rambus-style crazy prices.

Aside from that, PCI-E 2.0 is not a short-term panic point either: it's only recently we're getting to the point where an x8 slot isn't sufficient for a graphics card. We have a little time left on x16, especially if your upgrade plan is along the lines of "8800 today, midrange 9- or 10-series card later"

USB 3: what exactly needs that extra bandwidth that isn't on eSATA already? I don't think anyone asked for USB->GigE adaptors, did they?

I'm going to bet that quad-core will see some user backlash... as is happening with Phenom. It's not happening so much with C2Q because C2Q's fast, but for a lot of uses, an E6750 will beat a Q6600 and be cheaper. More clock was an across-the-board performance boost. A second core is nice because it offloads the parasite apps and improves stability (the system's usable even if one core is running an app that hangs). Quad-core only benefits parallelizable apps, and a lot simply aren't that parallelizable.

As someone who just completed a major upgrade, I can see where you are coming from. THe good news is the only investment I made that won't last 2-3yrs is the RAM. I went with the Asus Maximus Extreme with the DDR3 knowing full well that whatever RAM i bought now would need to be upgraded in a year as faster RAM came out. I think the mobo is about as future-proof as any motherboard an be, so I should get a good 3-4 years out of it. It supports the 45nm chips, so when the time comes I can upgrade to one of those and some newer low latency DDR3. And it supports PCI-E 2.0, so that's good.

So while it may not be the best time to upgrade, it isn't all that bad either, you just have to be smart and understand that at least one component is going to be a 1yr or less deal .

The time to upgrade is when your rig doesn't do what you want it to anymore.

I'm not so sure now isn't a good time. At least no worse than any other time.

With Intel's tic toc product release cycle in the toc phase you can buy a E6850 or Q6600 for the price you would have spent on a E6400 when it first came out. The 8800GT is less than half the price of the 8800GTX when new. The ATI HD cards are a good buy.

With eSATA now widely available, just how much is USB 3 really going to matter other than backwards compatibility?

DDR3 is still way overpriced and already obsolete, Samsung is producing DDR5 chips and GDDR5 is already in a few high end cards. I'm not going to wait for 2010 for it to become mainstream. DDR2 can be had for bargain prices.

X48 will be a very marginal update to the X38 chipset which was a marginal update to the P35.

DX 10.1 when it comes out will simply not be implemented by developers, so waiting to buy a DX 10.1 card is hardly a reason to wait to buy a new video card. Chrysis already drags even the highest end systems to it's knees on high details at large resolutions. It's going to take a huge improvement in hardware for card makers and developers to conform to the AA 4x requirement in DX 10.1 now that 22" monitors are selling in the low $200 range. DX 10.2 is when changes are likely to actually improve high resolution gaming by a healthy margin ....but that's a looong way off.

If you're waiting on Vista to improve, get comfortable and bring a big book.

The only DX 10 game I've read about that shows a improvement with a quad core is UT3. But if you can play at 1680x1050 on high with 4x AA at a rate of 50 frames per second with a dual core, is a couple more frames/sec really going to matter?

A year from now you'll still have the same sense that something better is just on the horizon.
And you'll be right. You'll still have to choose between things like the fastest chipset or a slower chipset that supports SLI. Getting hosed by bleeding edge prices for high-end, settling for mid-range or waiting for the bargain gear such as GT's, GTO's and 'Pro's that always show up sometime before the release of the next bleeding edge.

You simply can't predict a KT133 or nForce2 chipset or a Core2duo processor or 9700pro video card. Waiting for one is pointless. Just hope your needs coincide with one.

The Way I see it, Every "new" tech Lasts about 5 Years (in gaming terms). My athlon XP Is pretty much at the end of its lifetime and should be put back to stock settings and used for Folding. That means that I predict that ALL x64 bit procs should last atleast 5 years, before being replaced with something greater, if that tech will exist.

However, You have to wonder, Is There a Limit To How many transistors we can physically Fit in a CPU die? Sure, Theoretically, You Can Have 8 Cores on One CPU (or more), But at what cost? I predict that Most Likely, as the # of cores's inside a CPU Increase, CPU speed will decrease, and number of pipelines will increase to make up for it.

My Machine (much like jdoggs) has been with me for 5 Years, and Cost me $500 back in 2002. Ive got minor upgrades (Bigger HDD, New Cables, Graphics Card and Replaced Ram) which probably total another $200 or greater. So after 5 years of Gaming, I think Ive gotten my moneys worth. I think this time around I might get something better, eg, instead of a budget of $500, I'll spend 600 to 700 with most of that money going on the Video card, Ram and a Good Motherboard with lots of overclocking options.Id like to get my hands on an Unlocked Phenom Proc (Tri Core OR Quad Core...heh)

It seems that the CPU is going to be the least of your worries, as is the motherboard (if you get the right one that is) and HDD. The HDD is sorta set in stone, Get a Small One to run your Main Partition on, and a Second one to put all your games on. Since games are getting Bigger (6.4Gb Anyone?) 120Gb isnt enough anymore. More like 320 Gb or even 500Gb will keep you satisfied. However, The RAM, and GPU arent set in stone, you can upgrade either one at any time, depending on where the market is. The only thing that sucks with this is, You have to choose when you upgrade if you want ATI or nVidia. You know by now that their Top cards are always going to try to top each other, and the performance difference between the two really wont make much of a difference in your perception. But not everyone can afford a high end card, What about Middle end, or Middle High End? Those will always change first. For example, If when you upgrade you find that ATI (for your budget) gives the best performance, But then a year or 2 later your finding your ATI card no longer gives you the pleasure you want, and that now nVidia will give most bang per buck. Now your at a disadvantage because you had to choose ATI early on.

Quote: Originally Posted by AntiM The time to upgrade is when your rig doesn't do what you want it to anymore. DX 10.1 when it comes out will simply not be implemented by developers, so waiting to buy a DX 10.1 card is hardly a reason to wait to buy a new video card. Chrysis already drags even the highest end systems to it's knees on high details at large resolutions. It's going to take a huge improvement in hardware for card makers and developers to conform to the AA 4x requirement in DX 10.1 now that 22" monitors are selling in the low $200 range. DX 10.2 is when changes are likely to actually improve high resolution gaming by a healthy margin ....but that's a looong way off

Yeah, but I've heard Microsoft is willing to do anything to improve Vista's reception. In fact, they'll send a guy to your house to beg you to use it just for ordering a Dell with a copy of XP on it.

Seriously though, I've heard they're releasing SP 1 for Vista here soon... it'll hopefully be a little more attractive after that. Oh wel, they're also talking about a new version of Windows by the end of 2009... so time will tell.

Anyway... four in the morning... brain tired trying to finish very late math assignment... sleep...

Yep, SP1 for Vista and SP3 for XP are in beta testing phase now. Someone posted the hack on how you can download it now. But so far the benchmarks have not been promising for Vista.

To my mind, after tooling around in Vista for awhile, the only promising thing at all is DX10. And all the good DX10 games will run in XP with DX9L.

As for DX 10.1, the quote that sticks in my mind of the articles I've read is, "Vole shoots self in foot."

I'm currently using Chrysis for a review I'm working on as a DX10 benchmark and it makes you understand the 4x Anti Aliasing requirement of DX 10.1. The game looks like ass without AA enabled, all sparkly shiny vegetation that could induce epileptic fits. With AA turned on the game is simply georgeous ...and runs and plays like ass.

DX 10.1 will require a hardware change most mainstream users simply can't afford in order to run well. Developers will continue to write for DX10 (and DX9) until DX 10.2 can actually offer serious programming/performance improvements and bypass the 10.1 spec entirely.

The most common resolution for gaming on Steam a year ago was 1024x768 by a huge margin. Now it's only 31%. 1280x960 accounts for 41%, 1440x900 is at 7% and in the short time 1680x1050 has become widely available it's already up to 9%. That's a big change in a very short time. Nvidia or ATI would have to pull a seriously large rabbit out of their hat for DX 10.1 to be viable.

But then, I'm still waiting to see something that actually runs significantly better in 64bit.

Flash drives with USB 3 will be nice... thats why USB 3 will still be better than eSATA, I can't take my eSATA drive to back up an old computer, but a flash drive I can prolly go back to ~2000 budget computers and find USB 1.1

Maybe I'm a bit silly but isn't PCI-X really really old? Like PCI-X - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote: Originally Posted by Dreyco Maybe I'm a bit silly but isn't PCI-X really really old? Like PCI-X - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Old habit for some of us to call PCI-Express PCI-X (I blame it on the old trend anything that starts with ex* being shortened to X). I'm rather sure he's talking about the new PCI-Express standard, but I'm not really concerned by that one in regards to upgrade choices.

Great article and so very true.

My personal opinion about upgrading is that there are really only two times someone would NEED to upgrade ant it has nothing to do with the latest tech

#1 - your pc stops working , so you have to either replace it or part of it
#2- Your pc no longer can handle what you do with it, like more storage, better video, more cpu power , more memory .

I personally buy things ( hardware) to kinda keep up with the tech for "want" not "need", but for 99% of my customers , a simple memory bump or larger HDD is the fix. There are those ** you know who im talkin' bout** who buy the cutting edge hardware because it a passion or addiction, and for braggin' rights to say they have the baddest rig on the block. This to me isnt upgrading its "feeding your hobby" and even those folks that sport the latest greatest hardware, im bettin', rarely do anything to take advantage of it.

If someone was to upgrade on the basis of "New Tech" they would quite litterally be replacing things on a monthly basis if not more often.

I've decided that I'm sticking with my current hardware until the end of next year now (unless I get a spare £90 for a HD3850). Then I'll move to Nehalem (quad core or maybe octo core if I've got the cash), LGA715 (which if I read the road maps correctly is the right socket), loads of DDR3 (2GB still seems like loads of me though), and one of ATI's R700 cards with is meant to be a multicore GPU.

The biggest upgrade dilemma I've had was when I moved to Athlon64... mainly because I didn't know if I should go PCI-E or stay with AGP to save some money. I stayed with AGP and got a 6800LE which died 5 months later forcing me to buy a PCI-E motherboard and a Video card (DFI Ultra-D and X800GTO2 though which was a nice combination).

Hmmm, I upgrade every couple of months :-) While I like having the "newest" stuff,
I'm usually always on the lookout for used "new" stuff. And it doesn't hurt to get to
know the people you meet on these forums. I have a friend who works for Intel and
he's been setting me up with some fantastic deals on cpu's. I got a new QX6850 for
$450 and I've got a Q6600 on the way for $145. The Q6600 is for Cpt.Planet. My
friend can get (1) of each model per year. GrandpaNoob has dibs on a Quad core when
he get's back. I'd like to be able to setup everyone when they want one, but supplies
are limited. But my close friends are welcome to ask, it takes longer to arrive but the
savings are worth it :-)

My problem seems to be HDD's the larger they get the more stuff I have on them, but then if I try to do a few things at once I notice a huge performance hit. Aka the HDD can't keep up even with a 16MB cache and Sata II. I'll be trying to run say... itunes with 160GB of music, and then Bf2142 which has all the maps, then finally just the OS and it will lock up but RAM and CPU never go over half.

Another thing is that I find it scary that I could lose 300GB of stuff in one blow... things that have taken years to accumulate. I mean I have my music backed up but still...

Depending on what you're looking for, and what you'll be happy with in the future, I don't think there has been a BETTER time to upgrade. Prices on components are insanely low. For about 500 bucks I turned my ageing 939 computer that was starting to get annoyingly slow into a darn fast machine. I remember when $500 would only get you a near top of the line CPU, or a mid level CPU and maybe a gig or two of ram. I got a mid-high level CPU, two gigs of high end ram, and a high end mobo for half the cost of my 939 adventure.

And I figure it this way: by the time DDR3 really starts to become necessary for a fast machine, prices will have dropped enough to make it worth getting. I didn't once wish I had DDR2 until I could get 2gb of it for what? $40 on newegg?
And those four cores are only going to beat a faster dual core CPU once software actually puts them to use. I still don't own many, if any, programs that make use of both cores, and that technology is getting pretty old. By the time Software starts making real use of four cores there will probably be 12 core chips out, and a quad core won't cost you too much.


I'm rambling, and I know it, but I'll try and clarify:
If you're trying to upgrade into a future proof system, it just isn't going to happen. I think it's best to balance cost and CURRENT performance, since it seems that by the time the technology becomes useful, the hardware the early adopters bought will be obsolete already. I had a dual core processor, and let me tell ya, it isn't doing so hot right now, and the tech is really just starting to come into the main stream. (Games are FINALLY starting to be "dual core optimized") If I'd have bought, say an FX chip instead of my lowly 3800 X2, it'd still be in the same boat: obsolete. By the time my e6750 is a slow beast, I'll bet ya that fancy pants extreme quad core will be in the same boat. And what's to say that useful DDR3 chips are going to work as well as they should in today's mobos? Remember SLI when it was new? Sure those old boards support it, but I can guarantee you a new sli mobo will run it faster. Socket 775 has been around for AGES, but that doesn't mean jack to the guy who wants to upgrade his old Pentium to a C2Q. In short, old is old, new is new. That won't change.
If you want to upgrade simply to have the meanest machine on the planet, there's no time like now, and in two weeks, and probably another couple weeks after that. It changes too fast for me.

Quote: Originally Posted by capt_cope If you're trying to upgrade into a future proof system, it just isn't going to happen.

There will never be a future proof system. Yes, there are many deals that would allow me to keep a current rig competitive, but upgrading to a new technology platform would require a whole new system and right now is not the time to do that. It is a good time to update, but not a great time to upgrade.

I whole heartedly agree with you here DS. It probrably doesn't even help that I'm so behind on the tech right now that I wouldn't even know how to build a nice gaming rig.

At the moment my head is just spinning so much new stuff that I have to add into my mind and remember what is compatible with what.

I'll be content with my AMD dual core until sometime in 2008. Then it might be time to ask a few n00bie questions when it comes time for a new pimped out rig...

But I know you all will be nice...Riiighht?

Quote: Originally Posted by Dreyco Flash drives with USB 3 will be nice... thats why USB 3 will still be better than eSATA, I can't take my eSATA drive to back up an old computer, but a flash drive I can prolly go back to ~2000 budget computers and find USB 1.1 Maybe I'm a bit silly but isn't PCI-X really really old? Like PCI-X - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If I remember right, the "Express" was the bus, not the interconnect, even if it had been called "express", it was never marketed as such. These days, it's a note on a PCI card's requirements calling for PCI 2.0 or better.

Still, ISA moved to PCI (and PCI's many incarnations). It never changed names officially until the newer standard, PCI-X, which basically replaced AGP as THE graphics port (and the new standard for PCI).

Here's a decent link for some history: Howstuffworks "How PCI Works"

Quote: Originally Posted by Darksamurai If I remember right, the "Express" was the bus, not the interconnect, even if it had been called "express", it was never marketed as such. These days, it's a note on a PCI card's requirements calling for PCI 2.0 or better. Still, ISA moved to PCI (and PCI's many incarnations). It never changed names officially until the newer standard, PCI-X, which basically replaced AGP as THE graphics port (and the new standard for PCI). Here's a decent link for some history: Howstuffworks "How PCI Works"

You left out Nubus.

PCI-X had the same pinouts as PCI and was backwards compatible with PCI. Used mostly in servers. It was not widely adapted. There was also a PCI-X 2.0. (circa 2003) We've got a rip where I work with a PCI-X scsi card in it, boards are really hard to find.


PCIe or PCI-E or PCI Express (same thing) introduced a new interconnect which is faster, cheaper and has at least a bit of a future. PCIe is the widespread replacement for AGP in videocards not PCI-X.

PCIe 2.0 (x16) is the latest standard in desktops and is backward compatible with PCIe (x4 & x8)

The leetle bitty PCIe slots are PCIe x1
The other little PCIe slot is a PCIEx1_1, usually an audio slot.

Legacy PCI slots on boards are usually PCI 2.2 and backwards compatible with older PCI specs.