How often to upgrade?

[noidly1]

how often, REALISTICLY, should one upgrade their system and when?

 

[alcattle]

You should upgrade a system when it does not do what you need it to do. You can upgrade to make things faster if the benefits out weigh the costs.

 

[RJ]

how often, REALISTICLY, should one upgrade their system and when?

There's no set timetable/schedule to say. Sometimes it only takes adding more memory, or a newer graphic card, or a faster cpu within your family to get a sufficient increase in performance. I decided recently to go from the AMD 4400+ X2 939 socket, to an Intel Core 2 Duo. I had to get a new CPU, motherboard, and memory to make it all work. I carried my hard drives and video card over from the old system. I ended up getting a new power supply because my previous one couldn't keep up with overclocking.

Luckily I had enough spare parts around to still make a functional system out of the old AMD setup.

 

[noidly1]

That's funny. I just picked up where you left off. see my post below.

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/PSU-upgrades-ftopict224277.html

 

[insightdriver]

Realistically there is no set answer. The way technology moves will determine whether upgrade or a new machine makes more sense. For example, my current machine has AGP 8X graphics slot. Now, PCIe is standard. It makes no sense to upgrade my machine now at three years old. It would make more sense to get a new motherboard, power supply, processor, video card and one of the new hybrid hard drives. With that many parts it is essentially a new computer.

 

[scorch]

I built my system in november of 05 and I am now at a decision of weather to upgrade or wait and build another if I want to jump to Vista. My upgrade would consist of video card, memory, powersupply, and hard drive, with buying windows I'm over $500.

I would like to play games on the other hand so I am just upgrading my memory and getting a 7600gs video card and if I have to a new powersupply.

So the answer is when your needs change or software changes making what you got not enough.

 

[insightdriver]

Personally, for gaming, I would stay with XP until the directX 10 games become common enough. By that time, hopefully, better drivers will be out for Vista and game performance will be as good as XP and DirectX 9c is now. Any games written for directX 10 will still run on directX 9 anyway so with XP being supported by MS for 5 more years, I wouldn't jump too soon if I were a gamer.

 

[shata]

Im never going to do it just because the c2d came out like i did.

I will do it this way from now on. Save 50$-150$ every month for 2 years and then go all out on the best stuff money can buy.. then save again for 2 years.