Upgrading in the Near Future?

[1st duke of marlborough]

Current Build:

MOBO: ASRock A780GXE/128M AM2/AM2+ Xfire ready

CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9750@ 2.4 Ghz

GPU: Asus Radeon 4870 1GB

RAM: 8 GB DDR2 RAM@ 800Mhz

PSU: 650W Antec PSU

Cooler: Sunbeam CR-CCTF

CASE: Antec900 Case

MONITORS: 1 19inch Hanns.G, 1 17inch Hanns.G

HDD: 1 250Gb WD SATAII
1 750Gb Hitachi SATAII
1 200Gb Maxtor IDE
1 40Gb Maxtor IDE
External: 1 1.5Tb Seagate USB2.0 External HDD

Mouse: Razer DiamondBack
Keyboard: Saitek Eclipse
Speakers: Came with my family's old Emachine, good enough for me! lol.

So my question is, how good is this build? I know its aging, which is annoying since its not that old, only a year--plus I only got the GPU in August! How long until I should upgrade, barring any sudden and unforeseen leaps in technology? I've been doing a lot of research into how I could upgrade, but it seems to me that, until software really catches up, my set up is more than sufficient. Thoughts welcomed!

Oh, and I know that my HDD's are kinda screwed up, lol, but they're from a bunch of old builds. I have the OS on the 250Gb, DL everything on the 750Gb, back everything onto the external, and use the 200Gb and 40Gb for random ***. I am in the middle of reorganizing my filing system, as I had Vista installed on both SATA drives--combined 2 computers--thus I had duplicates of a lot of ***, lol.

Regards,

1st Duke.

 

[cory1234]

All depends on if you are happy with the performance of your current system? and your budget.

 

[1st duke of marlborough]

I feel like it could be better, but at the same time it's not like it's bad enough to were I really need an upgrade. This is just an assumption, but I figure my budget will be around 400 for the Xmas season, which I figure would be enough to up the RAM, MOBO, and CPU to modern tech. The problem I have with upgrading is twofold: is ddr3 RAM really THAT much better than DDR2, and are the new phenom II processors THAT much faster than the Phenom I's, to the point where the performance is noticeably better?

 

[cory1234]

The difference between ddr2 and drr3 is basically nonexistent. I'm not too familiar with the Phenoms because intel's i5 and i7 are the much better value right now and they overclock very well.

If I were you I would wait a little while longer and save up more money and just buy a whole new system sometime down the line.

 

[1st duke of marlborough]

Ok, so my impression was correct. The differences between the Phenoms, so far as I can tell, are: Phenom II's have better clock speeds, smaller die (I believe 55nm vs 65nm), and a much larger L3 cache (6mb vs 2mb). I am unsure, however, if these improvements are so substantial that performance is that much better. I figure I will take your advice and wait a while, see what happens.

 

[masterasia]

Avoid the first gen Phenoms. They suck. I don't even know why AMD released them. Maybe it was to try and compete with Intel which it failed miserably at.

 

[1st duke of marlborough]

Lol I was kinda forced into them...Christmas present from my dad: a prebuild HP w/ the Phenom already in it, lol. When I upgraded in the middle of the summer, I kept the processor and RAM, n got a new mobo and a Radeon 4870. Oh, if only I had known last CHristmas what I know now! lol