Hiya everyone,

Its been 5 years since i bought a pc, ive modded and maxed out my pc but now i cannot play the games i want to.
Current spec:

-AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Overclocked to 2.4
-Asus K8N-E Deluxe MoBo
-3gb or RAM
-ATI X800 Pro Overclocked
-Creative audigy soundblaster pro
-2x 250gb Sata II Hard drives

Its served me well and runs very quick still but obviously i need to buy a new pc now.

I have got a new pc in mind and the money to buy it tomorrow but i dont know if i should wait for anything new coming out, what do you think of this spec, and will it last:

-Asus Rampage Extreme intel x48
-Intel Core Duo EG8600 wolfdale
-OCZ 4gb DDR3 Ram
-Asus ATI Radeon hd 4870 x2
-Asus Xonar D2X 7.1
-Tagan Piperock PSU TG1100BZ
-1TB Samsung Spinpoint HDD /maybe SSD 128gb, (Samsung are mass producing them soon so prices will be alot cheaper)

Buy this or wait?

Thanks Alot, Jordan

There is always something new coming out in a few months.

Some of what you list though is not a very good buy. If you really have to buy that absolute fastest motherboard and expensive DDR3 RAM, with perhaps a 4% improvement in performance over a rig costing half the price, why put a mediocre processor in?

Get a Q9550, and a DDR2 Rampage Formula, and some DDR2 800Mhz memory, and you'll be just as happy.

Or if you wanted to go cheap tide yourself over while you wait for better stuff to come on the scene, I'm guessing you have socket 939, if your board supports it, you could look around on ebay and pick up an Athlon x2 chip to overclock, and if your board also has pci express for the graphics, pick up a better graphics card like a 4850 or better, then when newer stuff comes out, carry the video card to the new build, and part out the rest of the old rig on craigslist or on ebay. Granted it would not be the fastest rig out there, but if you couldn't wait and still wanted to get the latest and greatest as soon as it comes out, it may be an option.

I agree with Proximon. The motherboard and DDR3 RAM are very expensive and I wouldn't bother spending that amount of money on them unless you plan on doing some extreme overclocking. If you are gonna do some extreme OC'ing then I recommend a good water cooling kit (the good ones start at $150+).

In my opinion the E8600 should be fine as most games are not even coded efficiently for dual cores, much less quad cores. I would recommend the Q9550, as Proximon mentioned, only if you do a lot of multi-tasking. For example, I bought the Q9450 when it was first released because I tend to do video encoding and gaming at the same time. I may also tossing music encoding into that mix from time to time and also do some downloading (very little overhead).

I'm not a big fan of SSD 'cause after a certain number of re-writes, they simply fail. Not sure of the # of re-writes is in the high 100,000's. That's something you should check out. Based on some articles I've read in the past, SSD hard drives generally perform better than traditional hard drives in mixed operations, but they are a little slower at writting data.

Proximon nailed it.

the only suggestion i would make would be to get a Q6600 and overclock it instead of the Q9550, but thats just my opinion.

I was going to get a quad core but wot games supports it? i was even going to go down the skulltrail route, i mean i was overclocking the E8600 to about 3.6 ghz @ 1333 fsb, then the ram running @ 1333 mhz alos the motherboard runs superb on there.

So if i get a decent quad core then my system will actually utilise it?

the ram is like £140 and then cpu is like £170, so not alot of money to be honest

Thats been a debate for a LONG time jordan..

Yes and no, Games only use up to two cores so far, but many new games coming out are supposedly going to have quad core support.

I would get the quad core because it would last you longer, since intels new chip is a quad core only and not dual i forsee a epic splurge of games that use quads..

As for price the quads cost about the same and a nice Q6600 quad would do well. And it can be overclocked substancially.

Basically, if you buy the quad NOW, you don't have to buy it LATER. lol.

Most games don't even effectively use a dual core CPU. Supreme Commander is one game off the top of my head that can actually make good use of a dual core.

If you don't plan on upgrading for a few years then sure go for a quad since it should give you better performance in a couple of years when and if the programmers can code game engines to have better multi-threaded capabilities.

If your going to wait untill January when the prices drop after the Xmas rush and just want a cheep upgrade you can have everything other than the GFX card for under $199 right now.

AMD dual core @ 3Ghz,Asus or XFX MB and 2GB set of DDR-800 are always onsale as combo units at most online sites....for less than a Q6600 alone.

As long as you do not insist on Vista then 2GB's of RAM is far more than most people really use,and a modern CPU with dual cores is also more than you need.

Benchmarks are nice for the ego but the truth is with all the other parts the same you can't see a game run any better at 300Ghz than at 3Ghz.

XP with 2GB RAM and a fixed 2GB page file lets me run 6 torrents,4 security programs and play Frontlines:FoW and only use 49% of the physical RAM.

Paying for a Quad,Vista,4+ GB's of RAM to play games is a waste of money.
Spend the saved cash on a good GFX card and buy a bond with the rest!

With the new Core i7 coming out do you think there is the slightest possibility of programmers NOT taking advantige of quad cores? can you imagine the better AI they could do with two more cores to help it along?

Really this isn't a question of will any game/program NOW use it, its a question of will any game/program use quad cores in the next year. And the answer has about a 80% chance to be "Yes".

Besides, as for it being a "Waste of money".. a Q6600 quad costs $180
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115017

And a dual core costs $160..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115038

wow thats more than enough for a "bond" right? 20 bucks more for a thing that basically has double the power. And it will DEFINITLY last longer in the computer world.

Basically you can spend 20 bucks more and have a better chance of not having your compuer be screwed by 2011.

OK then, well i thought of getting a powerful quad core anyway, and since its a new build i may aswell get the 4gb, and i mite aswell get vistal ultimate 32bit.

By the way $160 is like £80 in uk pounds so it may seem more expensive in the state side, nut maybe that isnt the case!

Thats all good advice though i mean, i have looked into the spec that i laid out quite in depth, in terms of testing and compatilbility with other hardware and sortware, i mean its a good spec but obvious the way foward is quad core .

Buy now.
Wait for the new stuff to come out.
Let them find the bugs.
Let them fix the bugs.
See the price drop.
Then buy.

In that order.

I have a similar set up and just bought a new PC. Actually mine was even worse since I had XP 2800+.

To put it simply, there is always something new coming out, which you'll have to pay a premium for. Then, there is always something that's been out for a bit and offers best bang for the buck. Then, there is always something that's been out for a long time and you probably shouldn't buy. There is never a "right" time to buy. You just have to make a choice which of the above you want at the time of your purchase.

Personally, I tried to go with best bang for the buck: E8400, P5Q-Deluxe, 4gig DDR2 800, ATI 4850, etc.