A good time to buy?

[The Horse Man]

Hello all,

Just a quick question. My PC (Athlon 64 based!) is on its last legs now and I'm ready for an upgrade. I'm looking at an Athlon X4 of some nature, 4 gigs of ram, on board graphics or cheap card etc... Last PC has lasted me around 5 to 6 years with no upgrades, I expect the new one to do the same.

Use the P.C for browsing and movies / TV mostly, with the occasional bit of gaming (strategy usually)

My question is this; is it a good time to buy now? I see AMD have a new group of APU chips coming along for example. I've done a bit of reading around them, but haven't got a feel for if its going to be a major step forward.

As you can tell from my PC specs above, I'm not a hard core gamer, I'm never going to be spending huge amounts on graphics cards and the like, I'm just trying to make sure that I'm not making a mistake buying now rather than in 6 months. I'm familiar with the speed of advancement in computers, I'm just really trying to check that this new APU business ( or something similar) isn't about to make my purchase seem foolish.

Thanks very much for your time reading this.

 

[batuchka]

If your usage patterns equate to time = $$ and u need as much monster in the processor then awaiting the next gen offerings from AMD/Intel makes perfect sense but from your description i am thinking even a sub $400 rig as shown here would suffice hehe

Use the P.C for browsing and movies / TV mostly, with the occasional bit of gaming (strategy usually)

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/300632-31-budget-system

 

[The Horse Man]

To be slightly more specific (I think) I read about AM3+ chipsets in Q1 maybe Q2 2011. Is this something worth waiting for? I'd be going in at the bottom of the AM3+ range I'm sure whereas I think I'm looking at the middle of the AM3 range.

Where's my damn crystal ball?!

 

[Zenthar]

Even if you are looking for AMD CPU, I would wait for Sandy Bridge in a month, at least to see it's impact on overall market prices. Moreover, Sandy Bridge's integrated GPU performance reaching the level of an HD 5450 card (a 40-50$ entry-level card) and twice as powerful as most on-board (see Anandtech's preview), it might be a perfect candidate for your very light gaming habits.

 

[The Horse Man]

Thanks for that Zenthar. I was leaning towards waiting, nice to have some confirmation. There's suggestion that AMD will have to get their new chips out soon after Intel, so waiting seems a good idea!

 

[ScrewySqrl]

AMD's Bobcat is due out about the same time, as a netbook/notebook/nettop processor, and Bulldozer is due in March/April