New PC - Do I have to wait for Conroe?

I've been itching to buy a new PC for a month now. I'm currently using an outdated Dell Dimension from 2000/2001(?). 2.0 Ghz Intel Processor, 512 MB of rambus RAM, and a 4X AGB (max) 128MB Nvidia graphics card. I've saved well over $3000 for the system of my dreams but recently I've been confused on what to get. I was planning on a FX-60, 2GB corsair RAM, 2X7900GTX Nvidia's but now I'm wondering if I should wait for Conroe? It's gonna be faster and I just read somewhere that it's gonna be half the price of the FX-60 (~$500), holy crap. Plus, it supports DDR2 RAM while AMD doesn't. Double crap... I totally wanted to join the fight against big companies (Microsoft, Intel, e.g.) but not at the cost of my dream system. Do I have to wait?

Now is probably the worst time to buy a PC.
Build a high end sistem(apart from the CPU) on a 965 mobo(that should support Conroe). When it arrives replace the CPU with Conroe. Presto!

It is true that there will always be something new around the corener, but it seems to me that Conroe (and possibly AM2) may not just be a big jump in performance, but also a very favourable shift in performance/price ratio (I think this will be true regardless if you end up buying an AMD or an Intel system). By that time I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that the new DX10 graphics chips will also be available, and it would be interesting to see how they stack up against what is available today.
True, true, there will always be something new coming, but it seems to me that unless you really need the new system now, this seems to be a particularily bad time to build a high end system.

I disagree with you.

If you can find a motherboard with VRM-11 now, then find me.

There's one thing in particular that Intel is bragging about on the Conroe system, and that's power per watt. They had a chart on TOm's Hardware last week I believe that had a crude graph of the power consumption. Starting with the original Pentium and continuing to the P4, the chips actually gobbled up more power per instruction. The Conroe and its sister chips will consume power at a rate roughly equal to that of the original Pentium. That alone may be worth waiting for.

Conroe isn't even being called a Pentium. They have that much faith in the product. If you buy now you might be the guy with the nice 486 in a Pentium world. I think that's how they will view Pentium people in a Conroe world.

No Conroe till September.

I'm waiting until Conroe. If it's as big a deal and as much of a technology leap as they claim, it will be worth the wait. You have got to wait for the boards to support it as well so be patient a little while longer. If it's NOT the big jump ahead that they claim, you still have the current generation of quality CPU's from AMD to choose from if your not willing to wait until the AM2 is released which will also use DDR2. It's your call but I can honestly tell you I'd rather work off a $hitty laptop and wait until Conroe vs. kicking myself in the A$$ over all the money I spent on the latest antiquated hardware. IMVHO. Good luck

Don't get an FX60; it's a ton of money, and it will soon be obselete because of the FX62. Unless you're Bill Gates, the FX series don't make sense. Get a 3800+ and overclock, or even a 4800+ and have $400 for a 7900.

three grand that's an a$$load of bling bling to spend on a PC!

I am of the buy now at 1/2 of what you have and then buy/upgrade later with the other half. You have $3000 saved up right? OK so spend $1500 on a new PC now. Buy a a64 3200 and overclock it to HTT 250 and get a nice 25% overclock to 2,500mHz, buy a cheap mobo like the asrock
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813157081

grab a GIG of ram for like $75, or 2GIGs for $150. I would reccomend keeping it cheap because DDR2 800 is when things get interesting, and it's not available, or supported right now.

Get a good case, powersuply, optical drives, and sound card as these are Really the only parts that will carry over from system to system.

Get a hard drive of a size you deem apropriate. Figure out if you want to put it in the next system you're going to be using, or not. If you need a new monitor get a decent one the 20.1" widescreen Dell 2005FPW is like $400.

so let's look at the damage.

$160 CPU
$70 mobo
$75 RAM
$80 Hard Drive
$120 Creative Labs X-Fi
$100 Case
$60 PSU
$400 Monitor
$60 for Optical Drives
$50 dope keyboard and mouse
$300 for a PHAT video card. 7900GT

Grand total of $1550 and you can probably do better than that if you shop around, or use mail in rebates. This machine will shred any game you throw at it. It's one hell of a system.

Once conroe comes out you spend
$600 for the processor
$150 for the Mobo
$200 for 2 GIGs of DDR 800
$400 for whatever crazy new video card is out there at the time

Again you'll probably be able to do better, but BAM! $1350
Now you can have a fast PC now, and a MUCH faster one later. That's my advice. If you ebay your old parts... well then forget about it!

-manno

I think it would just be easier to decide once Intel and AMD get their poducts out there to shift other prices.

What is considered highend now, might have a more attractive price tag when its taken over by another flagship product.

So to build a highend now, might be a bad time, if you want to save some cash.

For starters, why pay $1000 (!!!!!!) for an FX60's 2 frames/sec advantage over an Opty 180 or X2-4600+? Save the other $350, it will pay for the 2nd 7900 series card...

(Also, if going SLI, I'd consider the much less expesive 7900GTs at $299 each over the $500 GTX variants; the former offers great performance at the $600 total /SLI video price point!)

If you can possibly live with your current rig for another 3-4 months, it might indeed be worth waiting on Conroe, as the prospect for a 20% boost in performance over an FX60 in many games and at a $500-$600 pricepoint to boot, is indeed exciting....

DDR2 in itself is not much of an advantage yet, possibly because of increased latencies, and at least when comparing M2/ddr2-800 rigs with socket 939/pc3200, the latter held a 1 frame/sec advantage in most games, hypothetical bandwidth advantage be damned, apparently! :-)

I will come on here and be a bit different than everyone else...

I think you should buy, here is why:

1- you have the $ now, and buttloads of it by the look of it. tomorrow you may not have it anymore... $*** happens.

2- unlike what most are saying here, if you buy the MOST that you can afford, NOT the least you will NOT have a "mainstream" system in 3 months. example:

I bought a higher-end system 3 years ago, using all the $ i had available- it was a athlon xp 2700, 1 gig ram, 9700pro AIW, audigy, 120 gig WD 8mb, asus a7n8x deluxe nf4 mobo, extra ram sinks for the video card and sink for cpu (both for oc'ing) and some other things like that. It only hit the wall with the release of fear (800x600 medium settings). IT LASTED ME THAT LONG!!! played everything that i could throw at it. still playes bf2 great (1024x768 high settings), farCry is like buttah and hl2 screames on it (1280x1024 high settings, even lost coast w/ hdr).

I expect my current replacement to do at least HALF of that lifespan, if not as much. I bought what I could afford, at the max and that got me close to the top... you have the opportunity to HIT the top, easily... think of where you would be with that? 3 months will still show systems that can only dream of where yours will be. There may be a faster proc by a few Mhz, but in the end yours will look just as good onscreen at the LAN party, no diffs.

3- if you stagger out your purchases you could even spend MORE $ that getting it all at once, and you certainly can run into issues of not having the $ anymore (point #1) at the time of the last component purchase.

if you buy the same component you were going to get at the start months down the road, ya... it will be cheaper but then you will want the better one that made it cheaper and thus not save any $... instead you are back in the cycle of wait for the NEXT one... and the next... and so on.

I hope that helps offset what the others are saying... I am not saying they are wrong per-se, just that waiting is pretty much just that... waiting.

if you dont wait, then you are gaming... much more fun.

I would suggest an Opteron S939 1xx ( maybe a 170 or better ) and 1 or 2 7900GTs or 1 7900GTX.

The GTX's are very nice but 2 of them would cost way too much and not improve performance that much.

S939 still has some life left and you can always upgrade later when the AM2 pushes prices down.

It's usually smart to wait 2-6 months or longer after a product is initially released for prices to come down and bugs to be fixed.

Repeating....


$160 CPU ~ Intel Pentium D 820 (great overclocker)
$230 mobo ~ Intel 975 chipset (Will support Conroe)
$300 RAM ~ 2x1gig DDR2 Corsair
$280 Hard Drive ~ 150GB Raptor
$0 Creative Labs X-Fi ~ Use on-board sound
$100 Case
$130 PSU ~ Fortron Epsilon 600watt
$420 Monitor ~ Dell 2005FPW LCD (excellent quality)
$60 for Optical Drives
$50 dope keyboard and mouse
$400 for a PHAT video card 7900GTX or X1900XT

$2100
Then when Conroe comes out, replace CPU with Conroe, the system is Conroe ready. Expected the (non EE) highest end mainstream Conroe will be around $500.
Even then total system cost is still only $2600, beating your budget by $400!

As a bonus, for the next couple of months, you can explore and learn about overclocking using the 820 chip now, expanding on your overclocking expertise for when you upgrade CPU.

I agree. Don't even think about it.

The VRM will probably be very different and Conroe is not expected until September from what I heard and by that time the 65nm AMDs will be out or close to being released.

Even if the chipset works in theory -- the VRM probably won't.

Besides Intel will probably make last minute changes to the design making it incompatible.

They make more $ selling you new chipsets every time you upgrade that way.

Hi, this is my first time posting here on the Forumz. (I've been reading for about a month though) I suggest you wait for either AM2 or Intel Conroe because you will have more upgradeability. If you get a Socket 939 computer, you will never be able to upgrade your CPU, but of course if you're a gamer, the processor won't matter much and an Fx-60 will take you pretty far. It's the video card that matters. If I had all that money though, I'd wait for Conroe or AM2 because by then, I'd have even MORE money to spend on that killer dream rig. For example 4GB Corsair XMS, Intel conroe, 2 (or 1) X1900XTX 512MBs or 2 (or 1) 7900GTXs or the newer generation cards (Maybe Geforce 8 series and Radeon 2xxx series?) which would run blazingly fast. Maybe by then, new Opterons will be out with higher multipliers (Those help overclocking right?) , lower temperatures, higher clock speeds and overall higher performance and amazing overclock-ability. I've heard in 2007, AM2 is going to have quad-core so if you wait for AM2, you can get the FX-62, X2 5000+ or something lower-end, then wait again for 2007, get a quad-core and a newer generation video card since you probably WILL be saving up money. Anything is possible. But to know what will happen, you must wait.


If you've noticed, it seems like I suck at computers or something (or not) and it's true, I'm only 11 years old at Grade 5 elementary school but I just browse here and techspot to learn about computers (I one day want to build my own computer, it's my GOAL )

Or of course you can go the more fun way and get some good parts AT THE MOMENT. I would get these:

Get some s939 motherboard that has PCI-E x16. You might want a Crossfire or SLi one if you are going to use them. (Sorry I'm not very good when it comes to motherboards)
AMD FX-60
2GB of Corsair XMS memory (Get a motherboard that will allow you to upgrade up to 4GB later on as I highly recommend upgrading to 4GB LATER ON because it will work with your FX-60 dual-core side-by-side with it's dual-core processing power so you will have high speeds.
X1900XT(X) (Single or Crossfire) OR 7900GT(X) (Single or SLi)
500W+ Antec True(Smart)Power Power supply (More if using CrossFire or SLi)
Some extra fans in case
A case with some sort of cool gaming design
Remember to get a fast internet connection!

That would allow you to play every single game released at highest settings with high framerates from today probably up to next year and MORE! Not to mention that newer video cards will still be using PCI Express X16 so you can still upgrade your video card and first of all, video cards affect your gameplay and graphics more than your processor so you shouldn't worry. It's not like a video card is going to be bottlenecked by an amazingly fast FX-60 anyways. If hungry for more speed, you can just get some sort of better cooling system (water or something) a better power supply and maybe some fans and overclock your computer to have some more fast-paced gameplay. I hope this post has helped you as I will now be leaving.

My goal is to help out at least 1 person per day in all the forums I go to.

good word on the dual opty's man... THAT would be a machine!

Dont waste money on a X2. Do what you can to be Conroe ready. Buy a 505 or a 805 and toss it in the trash when you buy a $200-$530 Conroe the september that is better than any X2.

That is BS. Thay would have had too use a POS nForce to show off Conroe. Thay had to use i975x, duh. It's not fliping 20%. Your full of it.

It was rigged.

Feel free to quote all the syntetic benchmarks in the world.

You dont know much about laptops and upgrading them.

I don't know where you got this information that Intel rigged it, Mad Mike maybe or Rahul. But none the less you have no proof, just BS. And when it comes out you will be wrong. But you and I may as well just wait, and ponder the evidence we have now. Not the BS you have.

You finally said something I can agree with. Good night.