It's been a long time since I've been on these boards. I still have my 2.4C OC'ed to 3.0 which has served me well for a long time. But I'm getting the upgrade itch...

Is now a good time to upgrade to P35, 8800GT, and DDR3 or are mainstream quad-core and next gen DX10 cards around the corner?

I haven't been able find release dates for next gen parts. I think I can wait until Xmas if needed, but have some spare time to build a system now. Just seeking some feedback from the current forum gurus, thanks

I am far from a guru right now, as I have fallen a bit out of the loop with new technologies heh...but...I am looking at the same situation you are. What I have found in my pricing is that with the new stuff out already, and the 8800's having been out for a while...now is a good time to upgrade. ~$1000 (assuming you have that much) seems to go a long way today for gaming rigs.

In my opinion, I would get the P35 now, get the 8800GT (if you, like me, don't like the 8600GT OC2), and wait on the DDR3 to drop in price.

I plan on spending $1000 or so, not including monitor etc. I'm a big bang for the buck guy. I feel even more dated than the recent THG article with the 3500+. Back in my day Abit IS7 and 2.4C was where it was at.

I've still got my 18" LCD which was bleeding edge in 2000 or so (cost nearly 1k then yikes), but ghosts much more than recent models.

Old school!

OK, here's my 2 cents:

- under $1500 (or whatever) it's a great time to upgrade. Look at P35, Q6600, 8800 GTS 320 MB, DDR2.

- over $1500 it's not so clear. A new chipset called X38 will be released in September, a new high-end video card will be released in November, a new CPU from Intel will be released in December. All these will be nice but expensive, so it's only worth waiting for them if you have a good budget.

I'll add my 2 cents worth. If you can wait until November or December, then wait. Both Nvidia and ATI might have their new cards out, and even if you don't buy one, the present lines of cards should drop in price. As far as cpu/chipsets go, both AMD and Intel should have some new hardware out as well, so you could take time to pick over what you like best. Even if you don't get the latest stuff, you could probably pick up today's hardware cheaper. Also, by waiting a bit, you can add some more dollars to your funds and afford better hardware.

I myself am looking forward to either the X38/Intel cpu or the AMD Barcelona that's shortly coming out. I'll make the final decision later, when they actually get out and have a few benches to show their stuff.

thanks for the feedback, guys!

Video card wise Nvidia announced it will be sending it's reference boards to manufacturers for the new 9800GTX/GTS models. This was announced at recent the Game Developer's Conference in Germany a week or so back. Specs on the new cards, labled G92 (the 8800's are G80's), the cards will offer DX10.1 (supposedly a new DX10 upgrade that current DX10 cards cannot upgrade to. Yeah, blame Microsoft) and 1GB of DDR4 memory. Here are the specs which i am still waiting for Nvidia to confirm:

- 65nm process technology at TSMC.
- Over one billion transistors.
- Second Generation Unified Shader Architecture.
- Double precsion support (FP64).
- GPGPU native.
- Over one TeraFLOPS of shader processing power.
- MADD+ADD configuration for the shader untis (2+1 FLOPS=3 FLOPS per ALU)
- Fully Scalar design.
- 512-bit memory interface.
- 1024MB GDDR4 graphics memory.
- DirectX 10.1 support.
- OpenGL 3.0 Support.
- eDRAM die for "FREE 4xAA".
- built in Audio Chip.
- built in tesselation unit (in the graphics core" )
- Improved AA and AF quality levels

Price wise it was projected they will sell for around the price range of current GTX's and that the 8800GTX/GTS models may drop down in price a tad to make way for these cards. Release date has been slated for a mid November/Early December release. I'm sure more info will break out come October if not late September.

FYI:

X38 chipset out Sept 9th

Barcelona out Sept 10th (intel's 1up!)

G90s out Nov...Dec

Penryn out Dec...Jan

I'm personally going to wait on X38 (only a week and a little more), and see if barcelona will cut Intel pricing..

For GPU, I'll go ahead and get the 8800, and eVGA stepup to a g90..

CPUs...Penryn doesn't look to hot right now 5% performance increase...for right now, kentsfield still is worth it

how's that audio chip?........was going to order the X-fi extremegamer fatal1ty pro for 80$ shipped today....

My audio chip? I use an Audigy 2. I'm not sure if I'll upgrade to the X-Fi or not. I've heard X-Fi can be buggy. Audigy 2 seems to work fine with my Klipsch 2.1 setup. Manufacturers have really slowed down on producing higher end computer speakers IMHO.

I meant on the g90!