Good time to buy? Opinions please.

[asdftt123]

This is something I've been debating with myself for quite some time. How would you rate our current technology and would you say this is a good time to purchase a new homebuilt system? For those who are thinking of building a new system, are you going to build soon, or wait till later (around christmas, or after new years) to purchase the newest parts or take advantage of cheaper parts? For me, there are advantages and disadvantages of both. If I decide to purchase now I'll save myself the unbearable task of waiting and I'll have a new computer to get myself through the fall semester in college since I have a horrible laptop that overheats constantly. If I wait however, I feel that I could reap the benefits of newer and better parts... I feel extremely torn as to what to do. As for me, no matter if I wait or not I'll probably be purchasing the best parts I can find since I want to avoid purchasing a new system for quite awhile.

Also, what do you think would cost more? Buying a system in late august/early sept with Q6600, x38, 4gb DDR2, 8800 GTX/Ultra or buying a system around december/january with penryn series, G90, DDR3 (if it becomes cheaper with better cost-performance)? I'll appreciate any insight...thanks.

 

[chief5286]

Well, here's my $0.02.

If I were in the market, actually, if I could sell my rig and my wife would let me be in the market, I'd buy right now. If you're going intel, it should give you a year or more before a new socketed proc is released. With the price cuts/new releases, $2-300 for the proc should go a long way. Unless you're planning on buying a pair of the uber GPUs de jour, I'm not sure there will be a tangible benefit to the x38 chipset. YMMV, as the 4 gigs indicates that you may have something other than pure gamin in mind.

A P-35 board will allow good overclocking in most cases, and will allow you to upgrade to wolfdale if it turns out to offer significant improvement at a good price.

Phenom (or whatever) is one of the wildcards. Could be great, could be an HD 2900 XT (good, not great). The timing of future releases is another.

If you wait long enough, it could get tempting to wait just a little longer for (insert next greatest thing here, nahelm or whatever).

Seems that right now, you get excellent value for the price on CPUs.

GPUs may be a different story.

 

[StevieD]

My rules of buying....

For a good buy, avoid the current model year or at least buy the item towards the end of the model year if all possible.

If I was buying a car, I would be buying a 2007 as the 2008's are arriving on the dealer's lots as we speak.

In the case of computer chips, let's look at the Q6600. That nice little chip has been on the market since late last year or the beginning of the year (exact entry date escapes my feeble memory). The entry price was big bucks. Then it was reduced in price, and in the past few days was reduced in price by about 50%. The Q6600 is one of the top of the line current model year chips. Back in the spring and it was without a doubt a cutting edge chip. It is still 99+% better than another thing else on the market. And the price is goooood.

There are new chips coming. The might be better. Actually we know they will be better, but what margin is unknown for sure. The new chips will be more expensive for most part .... hence the reason for the price reduction on the q6600 .... gotta make room for the new chips.

The time to buy is NOW.

The Q6600 will come down in price. Chips always do. But as a % of the cost, the price reductions will be minor ... 5%, 10%, even 25% is not a major reduction when the chip has a tray price of $266. And we must remember those reductions may occur over the next 1-2 years while the Q6600 is on the market.


The Penyrn series is coming. Intel is firing on all cylindars these days. The Penryns will be hot chips. There will be improvements over the Q6600. But those improvements will come at a price. Cutting edge is always expensive. There will be some good value buys in the Penryns, as there were with the Conroes. But even those good value buys (meaning the entry level chips in the series) may not out perform the Q6600 by a huge enough margin to justify the waiting. Maybe they will, maybe they won't.

What is known is the price/value of the Q6600 is at its best.


Graphics cards are not my strong suit. But the issues that concern CPU chips generally apply with graphics cards. The nVidia 8800's were introduced to meet MS Vista requirements. That means the 8800's have been on the market since late last year - early this year. Price reductions will occur in the coming months when the G90 is expected on the market, but how much of reduction is not within my guessing range. Looking at the last generation GPU cards on the market, I suspect the price reductions will not be as sharp as the CPU reductions that just occurred.

So all in all I would say, JUMP NOW. What you build/ buy today is going to last you for many years based upon the current requirements of games and software.

 

[aevm]

If you wait 4 or 5 months you will be able to get:

a) X38 instead of P35 //not worth the wait or cost, unless you want and can afford two high-end G9x video cards. No game in the world will need that in the next two years IMO, because software companies are not idiots and they want to target more than 1% of computer owners.

b) Penryn Quad Extreme at 3.33 GHz (possibly called QX6950, dunno). It will be 40% faster at stock than a Q6600 at stock, and it will overclock better. Again, no game in the world will really need that much CPU power, same reason as for GPUs. The cost will be US$ 999. It may be worth the wait and the cost if you use the PC for more than gaming.

c) G9x card, the high-end version replacing the 8800 GTX (btw, G90 will be weaker than the 8800 GTS, it's not the high-end card). It is rumored to be twice as powerful as the 8800 GTX. I doubt you'll be able to find it under $700, at least in December.

In conclusion, if you don't have a ton of money don't wait, because the new parts will be out of your price range and you'll just get annoyed and regret having waited. If you do have a ton of money it may be worth waiting, but only if you really need all that power. If it's just for gaming I wouldn't wait.

If you buy now, get a P35 mobo. That will allow you to upgrade the CPU later with minimal problems.

 

[williamfontaine]

Right now I find the graphics card market to be the biggest deterrent. When NVIDIA realized they weren't going to get beat by the X2900, they discovered there was no reason to drop the 8800 prices. Ergo, they still cost the same as they did before, which is a lot.