Upg now or after new-year?

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Fat_Bob

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Ive been saving some money and by my calculations, i will have anough money to buy an Abit IS7-E Mobo, a "northwood" P4 3.0 Ghz with 512mb PC3200 DDR...
But for some time i've been concerned if it would be a good choice to upg now.. I've heard that PCI-Xpress shoud come out to spring which means better Graphic cards..

So what should i do? blow my money or save some more and by later on to next year?
 
I have 2.. the one im using is a 1700+ with 512mb PC2700 ram and geforce 2 MX 400... The other one that i intend to Upgrade is a P2 400Mhz with 128 Mb SD ram
 
simple thing to do(what i have pretty much done myself).....go out and buy yourself a 9600pro and 512mb of ram

you should be pretty well off for most current games...you will see an increible jump in gaming performance....that should satisfy you for a while

save the rest and wait till next year.
 
If you can wait, then wait. It depends from person to person on what to do... I often wait a LONG time before upgrading, but when I do, I get as top of the line as I can afford (which is usually very near the top), replacing basicly the entire computer. Thus my computer is in 'synch' all the time. I dont have a 1ghz with a 9800 Pro, or 2.5ghz with a Geforce 2.
With my way of thinking, your computer is borderzone, and out of synch. Its got a relativly fast CPU, but an obsolete gcard. So my suggestion is that you either live with your G2MX (urk) and wait until early next year. Or buy a cheap G4Ti or ATI card (depends on what want to spend, I can suggest so many here, unlike the Nvidia cards which I only would advise a G4 for (no FX isnt worth it for this plan)) now and wait a while longer (mid-late next year maybe) and then upgrade it completly. That's just what I would do though.

Edit: Hehe, crabby was faster, darn :)
 
All depends why you are upgrading. If its in anticipation of HL2 then you should wait until it comes out, whatever you want will be eithwe 1.Cheaper or 2. Faster.

If you just want to upgrade generally then you just have to bite the bullet and do it when you feel comfortable. If you are concerned with waiting for the next big thing, you'll never upgrade.
 
I was planning on waiting to get a video card... but the fan on my GF4 Ti 4600 died and I'm using one of the three non-gaming computers.

I'll be getting a 128MB 9600Pro for $140 or less to hold off until the Loki.

For me, at this time there's no point in blowing $300 on a 9800Pro or XT when the Loki is supposedly right around the corner... maybe even before the now popular April estimate for HL2.

When that beast is released I'll overhaul my entire computer and slap the 9600Pro in one of my other computers.
 
Loki is codename for the R4XX.

Anyway, about the 9800Pro/XT not being worth it for Loki: Depends on how you look at it. If you buy such a card, why buy Loki? You can obviously wait until next versions, that's even faster (remember, the 9800 is the second version of the R3XX series...)
 
I wasn't going to buy a new video card until the Loki because I had a GeForce 4 already... but then it died and I was forced to somewhat alter my plan.

With the next card supposedly only several months away it would be a waste of money for me to buy a top-of-the-line card right now when the next card promises to be twice as fast for roughly the same price.

If I were going to buy a new car that hasn't been released yet but will be in a few months and my car broke down I wouldn't buy some other fancy car to pass the time (because it will depreciate a lot and I will lose money when I sell it for the new car). I would either carpool (I'm on my sister's sony VAIO V505 laptop right now) or buy a cheap car to use until then (If I buy a $150 card and prices cut in half I'm out $75 when I pawn it off... whereas with a $300 card I would be out $150... and the 9600Pro isn't far behind the 9800Pro to begin with).

There is a difference between buying in every other video card cycle (like I normally do) and perpetually waiting until video cards reach a plateau or always buying the POS "budget" versions of the cards.
 
Originally posted by dawdler
Loki is codename for the R4XX.

Anyway, about the 9800Pro/XT not being worth it for Loki: Depends on how you look at it. If you buy such a card, why buy Loki? You can obviously wait until next versions, that's even faster (remember, the 9800 is the second version of the R3XX series...)
Click to expand...


yeah but you have to look at how old the R3xx series is......


its coming up on the end of its life cycle. With the release of a part that is THAT much faster....it really doesnt make sense for somone to spend 400$ now when they could wait a few months for something thats supposedly twice as fast......


If it were going from the 9700 series ...to the 9800 series then it would be a differant story.

its all about the performance-price ratios.....
 
Originally posted by crabcakes66
yeah but you have to look at how old the R3xx series is......


its coming up on the end of its life cycle. With the release of a part that is THAT much faster....it really doesnt make sense for somone to spend 400$ now when they could wait a few months for something thats supposedly twice as fast......


If it were going from the 9700 series ...to the 9800 series then it would be a differant story.

its all about the performance-price ratios.....
Click to expand...
Yes of course, but we dont know its that fast. Especially not for an upgrade. Without a doubt (or at least, in my mind), the 'double' performance claim is using an extremely speedy CPU and a PCIX testbed with an engineering sample of the card (well obviously ;)), probably juiced up to its limits. Meaning, its very doubtable that the first versions out will actually be 'THAT' fast, not to mention they wont be it in a normal AGP computer. But no one knows, I would too advise to wait, just because of this claim :)

Always, Always, Always buy hardware last.
Click to expand...
To that post I would say: DUH! :P
Though when I get philosophical, how can you buy hardware last? You buy software first, read the demands, then buy a computer that fits it?
 
It means you wait until the software you want to upgrade for is actually released before you upgrade or else you could be caught in a situation like all the people blaming Valve because they didn't have the sense to wait for HL2 to be announced at least as having gone gold before they made major upgrades to their computers.

If you didn't want to play any XBox games that were launch titles (games released at the same time as the console) would you buy it at the full original price or wait until competition pushes the price down and the games you want are released?

Before I started talking in forums I would have called this common sense...
 
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