Best time to Upgrade?

[Lavace]

Lo all.
I'm planning on upgrading my PC, I have the HDD's, Optical Drives, Case, PSU etc sorted.

I currently need a Mobo, RAM, CPU, GFX Card.

My budget is ROUGHLY £250 and I've no idea what to get. I would LIKE, to begin hardcore gaming, I haven't upgraded in years, and my PC can't handle any new games on high settings/specs. I usually do heavy multitasking as well. 512MB Ram is enough, however, the month AFTER I buy the upgrades I'll buy an additional 512MB Ram.

However, whens the best time to upgrade? Someone on the forum said don't do before Xmas, my friend says January Sales (I thought that only applied to fashion/clothing :roll: ). And someone on this forum said March, why march?

I was thinking a COnroe E6300, but will this baby recieve any further price drops?

Also, THere are A64 3700+'s going for £50! I was swondering if I should pair this with some PC3200 RAM and a ATI 9600 AGP? Would it suffice for average gaming or what?

Any help,
Lav.

 

[o1die]

Vista is coming out for desktops on Jan 30th, so it may effect demand and prices. The e6300 is a bargain compared to anything from amd. Be sure you have at least a 450w power supply for any dual core cpu. Lightweight, cheap power supplies won't cut it for your upgrade. Fry's has the e6300 bare cpu with ecs board for $149 right now. That's about as cheap as it will get.

 

[melarcky]

Well if you are on a really tight budget the the AMD 3700+ with the 9600AGP will be ok.. you will be able to play games like HL2 and CS:source with good FPS and on high... But for new games it will have to be on low... My friend has a 9600pro and it has lasted him ages!

 

[I]

1) You won't do "hardcore" gaming with a 250 budget. That'll just about cover a good forward-looking video card.

2) The best time to buy that video card is about 4 months after the DX10 hardware arrives, so you have the DX10 support and it doesn't sell for a price-premium anymore as a "new" technology part does when it enters the market.

3) Presuming you don't want to wait that many months, you can go ahead and buy the video card now. Memory has historically been cheaper in early spring, but spot-prices including those with rebates may offset this enough that it's more a matter of how much time you put into looking for deals.

4) I'd consider 1GB of memory a bare minimum for a new build and even then, advise you to start out buying 1, 1GB module and later adding 1 more 1GB module. If it doesn't allow fitting all the parts into a 250 budget, buy the CPU first (as the odds of a problem with it are lowest) then later buy the board and memory at same time so you then have enough parts to test that the more likely parts to need exchanged for defect or imcompatibility purposes (memory and motherboard) are working or returnable within a few days of receipt.

5) E6300 will probably drop in price, the lowest speed in any family typically does drop, but if you wait too long, it not only costs less but it's relative value is less too- since games continue to demand evermore performancen with each passing *day*. However, a dual core CPU is not the best value for gaming unless you intended to o'c it quite a bit, otherwise for the money a single core like Athlon 64 will be the better gaming CPU on a limited budget (as you have described). Even so, if the most demanding use is gaming, budget mostly towards a good video card, then a minimum of 1GB memory (I'd still get 1 x 1GB module at first), then what's left towards CPU.

6) A64 3700 and PC3200 memory is reasonable for gaming on your budget, but Radeon 9600 is not even close to fast enough unless you only intend to play at very low resolution and low game eyecandy settings... and even then, marginal. I certainly would not build a new system including purchase of a new video card, for AGP instead of PCI Express.

There are other Athlon 64 possibilities closer to the price of the one you mentioned than to E6300, for skt 939 or AM2 (preference going to AM2 since you're buying memory too and since a good AM2 board should later support AM3 CPUs) both of which allowing a PCI Express video card so you aren't stuck with the dead-end AGP slot.

For your budget, you are looking at mostly lower-end parts. For board and CPU that can work but it also means that the timing for purchase will not substantially change their costs. Video card cost may change the most, memory maybe a little but you're not buying THAT much memory so the difference might not be much.

It might all come back to the same situation many face, IF you are currently trying to play games that your present system can't play acceptibly, you may as well upgrade now rather than waiting. If it can play the games ok, wait till it can't. In short, don't buy early or late, buy as your needs for performance demand.

 

[ethel]

To do hardcore gaming you need at least 1GB RAM - and as I says, get a 1GB stick so that you can match it with another one further down the line.

For the budget you have you should definitely go for a cheap AM2 mobo and a cheap Athlon 64, but you'll need to get a dual core CPU as you like to multitask.

A good value yet still pretty powerful card is the 7600 GT which can be had in the UK for £80.

But you don't have enough money:

A64 X2 3800+ - £100
Gigabyte GAM61PM-S2 - £55
Kingmax 1GB 240-Pin DIMM PC2-5400 DDR2 - £65
7600GT - £80

Totals to £300. Spend that, or get the 3700+ single core and you'll be down to £250.

 

[Lavace]

I see I see.
THank you all so far, I can easily raise my budget to £350ish. I just remembered I'll be getting a small £100 bonus in febuary, raising it =).

I think with that everything will be possible? 1 GIG DDR2, E6300 and a decent GFX and a decent mobo?

I am planning to OC to equal a E6600 or something, as well as OC the GFX Card.

Thanks!

 

[zjohnr]

Here are my reasons why I'm with the "wait a month or two or three and see" crowd. (Listed in the order they came to mind, nothing else).

[*:90fae3d89f]DDR2 memory is painfully expensive at the moment. But prices seem to have stabilized so maybe they might even drop a bit if I wait.

(Less likely is the possibility that they'll actually start selling DDR2 that can actually run at its rated speed and latencies without pushing it well above 1.8 volts. Oh, well ... some standards are less important than others I guess).

[*:90fae3d89f]Nvidia and AMD/ATI are introducing new chipsets for the Core 2 CPUs. Nvidia has already released their 680i chipset. Motherboards using the 650i chipsets are hoped for at the end of December or early January. Not sure what the dates are for the ATI chipsets, but they will probably also show up around that time.

[*:90fae3d89f]AMD/ATI is expected to release their new DX10 compliant video card in either December or January. Some are waiting for it to see if they want it. Others are thinking that yet another DX10 card may affect the prices of the current non-DX10 generation of video cards.

[*:90fae3d89f]I suppose Core 2 CPU prices could drop a bit if AMD does something in the interim that actually worries Intel. But I don't think anyone expects this to happen. (Probably not even AMD )

-john

 

[Lavace]

How long do y'all think this rig will last me (Looking for around a year):

A64 939 3700+
DDR3200 1GB
128MB X800GTO PCI-E
DFI LanPARTY UT RDX200CF

Im planning on OC'ing everything.

Any ideas ?

 

[m25]

How long do y'all think this rig will last me (Looking for around a year):

A64 939 3700+
DDR3200 1GB
128MB X800GTO PCI-E
DFI LanPARTY UT RDX200CF

Im planning on OC'ing everything.

Any ideas ?

One year for sure; technology runs pretty fast but programming is pretty sluggish to follow so it will take at least another year to see a full, new series of multithreaded (and hopefuly 64 bit games).

 

[ethel]

Don't get a socket 939 motherboard - you'll have to replace it when you want to go dual core as AMD are phasing out socket 939. If you go AM2 you'll be able to upgrade to dual core without changing the mobo.

If you want to overclock, wait for that bonus and go with a E6300 and a Gigabyte S3 motherboard. You should be able to get it to 3GHZ.