Upgrade or New Build

Wait for the new build, and use some of your old parts in the new system

Got you beat my Athlon XP-M 2600+ rig is pushing 4-1/2 years. The "newest" part is the Radeon 9800Pro.

Anywaste, socket AM2 is nearly upon us. You'll just need to wait 2 weeks. AMD's next CPU, "K8L", will come out for that socket next year. If you see yourself upgrading within 2 years then I think it's worth it to wait for AM2.

If you don't think you'll be upgrading for 3 or more years then you may want to just build a PC now since within 3 years time AMD should be releasing another socket. Also, AM2 will be slight more expensive, and they will offer very little performance gains over socket 939. Some hardware review sites have estimated that once DDR2 800 comes out it may boost performance by about 5% at best, but that's just an estimate and DDR2 800 will be somewhat expensive.

I would also go for a new build, if money is a constraint then look at a good 939 system as the new AM2 should reduce prices on those soon. PCI-e is a must and look into 4 ram slots as Vista will be able to support 4 mb easily. If upgradability is a must also get a good PSU that can handle whatever you throw at it in the next few years, I would suggest a 500W minimum. Also get a good dual core processor, the AMD X2 line (Opteron 165 or 170 if you are planning on OC) is currently better than the Intel D series (I'm not getting into a Conroe debate). Video cards are a personnal preference right now and you can't go wrong with a 7800GT or better for Nvidia or X1800 for ATI.

It's hard to say what prices will do after am2 comes out. There will be new chips (the am2 itself) and new motherboards (the am2 will not work on socket 939). Am2 will use DDR2, not DDR, so that is another thing to think about.

Personally, I don't see the prices dropping. 939 will still be the "mainstream" for a few more months.

It would be intersting to know how much longer 939 chips will be produced. I've heard everything from until the end of this year up to the end of 2007.

Duel core is the way to go. It's not just the future, it's now. There are many games already out there that will use both cores, and more on the way. Same with "applications". And even if it does not use both cores, having 1 core for the "game" while the second core does OS stuff is very nice.

If you are not going to do hard core gamming (which you said you were not), then don't worry about sli.

Sli really only makes sense if you "start" with it, not "get a second one" down the line.

What I mean by that, is the next generation of gpu's are always a huge jump in performance, for about the same price. Case in point, my two BFG 7900GTX's are top of the line; combined they have 2 processors and 1G of ram. I've read that the top G80, which will come out late this year will have dual proc's and sport 1G of ram.

So, the top G80 will be roughly equal to both my 7900GTX (not taking into account the g80 will run at a faster mzh).

So sli only really makes sense if you do it when you build (or soon after).

Now, having said that, there is nothing wrong with buying a sli board and only using 1 card. Some of those sli boards are very nice, and who knows, perhaps you will come across your 'card' on ebay for a steal...

I think there will be a price drop even if it's only a little. If you need a computer now though I wouldn't wait.

As to the SLI, even if you don't use SLI you may find uses for both PCI-e slots in the future as I'm sure some manufacturers will take advantage of the x8 or x16 slots instead of the x1 for PCI, possibly a sound card may be able to use a PCI-e slot in the future?

For instance you may put in two video cards but not use them as SLI, maybe a high end card for gaming to one monitor and a lower end card to plug a second monitor into so you can surf the web or chat while waiting for your team to win in CS:S.

Thats a negative on waiting for anew build and using your old hardware.
Personally you probably still can use the sound card but nothing else. Unless you are not building a socket 939 mobo w/ PCIe. The you can keep the gpu. But if you are going for a 939 and a PCIe mobo, I wouldnt recommend the current ram nor the psu
Kinda sketchy for the psu, unless like you said " not for hardcore gaming"
But I'd rather be safe than sorry
But thats just me
The ram, well the ram will also need to be replaced, its old and it will most likley bottleneck your new build.
-Good Luck-