Upgrade by late december

[Deleted member 89137]

By December Crysis will be out. The demo has been released and not only does NOTHING run it at maximum detail, but I can't even run it at low detail without getting artifacts

Anyways, I want to know what your standpoint on future technology is.

Will intel still be on top in December? Will ATi's hd3000 cards outperfom nVidias next generation chips?
Will DDR3 be as expensive?
What kind of power supply will I need... 2 years ago basically EVERYTHING could run on a 500 watt PSU. Now it looks like you need around 750 watts to run a gaming rig.
People are telling me I should do this upgrade in increments... Starting with a high wattage psu, creative x-fi, then 2 raptors, then Mobo, cpu, vpu, and ram all at once.

Personally I think that's a very good idea, considering that by the time I have all those, I will also have enough money to get the rest of the parts to own a top of the line next-gen system.

When I bought my current computer, I bought the first and fastest hyper threading processor, the 3.066ghz p4 w/ 533fsb.
Top that with the 9700pro, 1 gig of pc2100 ddr sdram, creative audigy 2, a raid 0 setup, I had probably one of the best systems available at the time. It has been quite some time since then.

I need to buy a computer that will last me a while (probably 5 years), not something that will cut a hole in my wallet and then I'll throw in the trash in a year or 2.
My computer that I'm using, though I've upgraded it quite a bit since its early days (in fact, the only parts remaining are the optical drives, motherboard, processor, and my audigy 2) has lasted me a LONG time. Now I look at the 8800 series graphics cards, and they can't even run crysis on maximum settings.

So whats in store for the holiday season? Will I be able to make an upgrade then that will be upgradable and last a while? Or will I be looking at shit that I will throw in the garbage in less than a year?

Thanks.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

How often you buy or don't buy a computer is depending on the applications you want to run and how fast you want to run them at, so discussing the longevity of your hardware is user dependent, not hardware dependent.

A word on future proofing: It doesn't exist, this is just something that you must accept with all technology. There will always be something better coming out making whatever you have obsolete.

Finally cost: who knows what is going to happen with cost. DDR3 isn't really widely accepted right now and I doubt that they will plummet by December. Although its possible to watch trends in the memory market, it's anybodies guess at how it will actually look in two months. But if you were expecting an $800 4gb DDR3 kit to drop to a more reasonable $300 in 2 months I can reasonably say that that won't happen.

Also I'm not entirely sure who is releasing what at this point. The 88** series for nVidia is growing old, much the same with ATi. AMD is going to release it's next processor but with the nm size make a difference? Only time will tell. Honestly the best time to know about future events or when to purchase a computer for the future is always... the future. That may sound overly simplistic, but before Half-Life 2 came out many people speculated on the best hardware, but you're not going to know that, or even have that (as something new might launch) UNTIL the game comes out.

So be patient, and don't worry too much about having your hardware right now (especially since you want this rig to last a while) and see what builds people are doing in when/after the game comes out.

 

[Dangman]

What Unknown Soldier said. But to add on a bit:

- Will intel still be on top in December? Will ATi's hd3000 cards outperfom nVidias next generation chips?
- Will DDR3 be as expensive?
- What kind of power supply will I need... 2 years ago basically EVERYTHING could run on a 500 watt PSU. Now it looks like you need around 750 watts to run a gaming rig.
- People are telling me I should do this upgrade in increments... Starting with a high wattage psu, creative x-fi, then 2 raptors, then Mobo, cpu, vpu, and ram all at once.

- Most likely. Though who really knows? The Phenom CPUs could turn out to be C2D killers after all, though I doubt it.
- Definitely. DDR3 Prices aren't expected to fall to current DDR2 pricing till 2009. DDR2 was released in 2003 and it wasn't until mid 2006 (I think) that DDR2 prices and performance matched DDR1 prices and performance. Also, DDR1 RAM was still going strong until the release of AMD's socket AM2 mobos and CPUs in mid 2006 which supported DDR2 RAM. So basically, DDR2 RAM is going to last a while before DDR3 becomes truly important.
- Wattage don't mean that much any more. It's where those watts are being delivered that counts these days. You can run a modern gaming system these days on a decent 500W PSU that has most of it's wattage allocated to the +12V rail. In fact, an excellent quality 500W PSU will often have more power available on the +12V rail than some 650W PSUs.

Also finding out who the OEM who built the PSU is pretty important as well. There are some PSU/OEM manufacturers out there that skimp on the PSU (Dear, Apevia, Raidmax, etc) while some spend an enormous amount of effort on creating some pretty damn good PSUs (Seasonic, Enhance, CWT, etc)

- Upgrading in increments seems like a good idea. But remember that Creative's Vista drivers are crap and that two Seagate 320GB drives in RAID0 can outperform a Raptor yet is still cheaper and offers more storage.

I need to buy a computer that will last me a while (probably 5 years), not something that will cut a hole in my wallet and then I'll throw in the trash in a year or 2.

Like UnknownSoldier said, that's up to the user, you, whether or not to throw away or buy a new rig. My P4 rig lasted me pretty long (from late 2003 I think?) until earlier this year when I built my gaming rig listed in my sig. It wasn't until I played Company of Heroes that I knew I had to build a new rig.

So whats in store for the holiday season? Will I be able to make an upgrade then that will be upgradable and last a while? Or will I be looking at shit that I will throw in the garbage in less than a year?

Well, again, hardware isn't always outdated within a year, just outperformed. And that it's also user dependent. Though old hardware can still hold their own against newer hardware. Look at how many S939 users who come to this forum every week asking if they need to upgrade to an Intel system. And most of the time, I say no because most of their system is still pretty fast for current apps and games.

As for what's in store, most of the newer hardware is actually being released next year i.e, Intel's new Wolfdale and Yorkfield CPUs, AMD's new Phenom CPUs, Nvidia's replacement cards for the 8800s, ATI/AMD's replacement cards for the 2900 series, etc. The only newer hardware that I can think of at this moment is ATI's new video card in the $200-$250 range that's supposedly is being released in the middle of this month.