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WHen's a good time to buy?

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xHARPOONx   03-01-2004 at 05:02:41 PM

I have a p4 1.7 with 512 DDR 266 and a ti4200. I like to think I'm a 'gamer" and to keep up with these new games coming out and to run them at higher resolutions I am beginning to think I need to upgrade.

I always read THG articals on new stuff, especially CPU's but when is a good time to buy? I mean I read all this stuff about Intel is going to launch new products soon - DO I WAIT? Or do I go for a cheap upgrade of MB, RAM and AMD Processor (prolly 3000xp) for a few hundred bucks?

Any advice on whether to wait for the new Intel chips or just buy now because I might end up waiting forever?

By the way I am on a lowish budget.

Thanks!

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trooper11   03-01-2004 at 06:13:59 PM
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Well since your a gamer, Im suprised you left out the amd64 line of chips. You could upgrade now to ath ahtlon 64 3000+, which is a great improvement over the athlon xp, and if you see all kinds of things you might want from the new intel chipsets or socket, then you can get that. When the grantsdale and alderwood launch, a 2.8 prescott will be highest available speed, with speed upgrades to soon follow. Alot of the new things coming arent going to be performance boosters, mainly laying groudwork for the future, such as ddr2 and pci-e. I think your safe with getting an ahtlon 64 now, or wait a few weeks for socket 939 for the athlon 64. Right now youll be able to ramp up to an ahtlon 64 3700+ if you buy an athlon 64 3000 now. Thge xp 3000 and 64 3000 are pretty cloe in price, so you should be able to fit it in your budget. Most of the new tech coming out wont be mature and show significant increases for a while.

Reply to trooper11
addiarmadar   03-01-2004 at 07:36:06 PM
- 0 +

Get yourself a barton system for right now. The mobile bartons have been exceptionally popular for those that wish to OC. The A64 platforms need more time for maturation. Do wait too long or your targets will get obselete and will have to futher for that same price that you wanted to be lower.

Barton 2500+ @ 2200mhz (10x220 vcore @ 1.8)
Asus A7N8X Dlx 440 FSB
1gb Geil GD pc3500 Dual Channel (2-3-3-6)
Segata 80gb SATA 8.5ms seek
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro(420/720)

Reply to addiarmadar
Anonymous   03-01-2004 at 10:46:57 PM
- 0 +

My advice is the following, if your a gamer, wait until some game you wanna play dont run smooth enough for you.
As long as your system gives you what your expecting I dont see any reason to upgrade...
Hl2 and Doom3 are comming in something like 2 month, you should have a hard time running these game with hi-res plus you wont have all the eye candy DX9 can bring.
By then new video card will be out (NV40/R420) wich will make the Fx5950 and R9800XT really attractive...
By then AMD sockect 939 should be out and also the Nforce3 250 should be there that'll give you a more mature options for AMD.
Grantsdale will be comming soon too.
So hold back for now really no sens in upgrading now when so many exciting stuff is just around the corner.

Reply to Anonymous
Anonymous   03-01-2004 at 10:49:53 PM
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Oh and btw what is that suppose to mean?

Quote :

Do wait too long or your targets will get obselete and will have to futher for that same price that you wanted to be lower.


Reply to Anonymous
xHARPOONx   03-02-2004 at 01:52:27 AM
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Two differing opinions lol. Hard to tell really what to do.

I think I will wait like somebody said, until the games I'm playing won't run well enough, otherwise it's a waste to upgrade. I think with HL2 I will be upgrading when that hits the shelves.

Thanks guys!

Reply to xHARPOONx
blackphoenix77   03-02-2004 at 03:34:20 AM
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If you ask me there's no sense in waiting. The deadline date for the product is almost always pushed back and when they do come out the prices are also almost almost always enormous. You should just buy something now...I don't know about recomending the amd64's yet..there's still a little premature? I wouldn't worry about waiting for the best time to buy.

AthlonXP 2000+
PNY Verto GeForce FX5200 :)
Go Emachines...:(

Reply to blackphoenix77
phial   03-02-2004 at 05:11:19 AM
- 0 +

the thing stopping me from considering a A64 is 1)price 2)we havent yet seen a "nforce2" chipset for the A64 yet. the best one is offered by VIA<, and i prefer to not buy via (mostly cause they pissed me off in teh past)

-------
<A HREF="http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/you.html" target="_new">please dont click here! </A>

Reply to phial
trooper11   03-02-2004 at 06:56:08 AM
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well tahts true, but i have used several of the via boards and they perform well. if you want the nforce3 chipset, then go for the Aopen AK89 Max , they fixed the HT problem and it performs well. otehrwise, who knows when the nforce 3 250 will be out.

Reply to trooper11
Crashman   03-02-2004 at 09:00:16 AM
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Now would be a terrible time to buy a top end system, anyone who would point to an A64 on current platforms doesn't care about quality, and the high speed P4s are overpriced.

But it's a great time to build a midrange system, consider an XP2500+ on an Abit NF7-S. And then consider overclocking, to get more performance for your midrange dollar.

Also consider that all current platforms will be rendered completely obsolete by the introduction of PCI-Express over the next year, and you'll see it's better to build midrange and save some money. Upgrade in 2 years instead of 3 or whatever.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

Reply to Crashman
phial   03-02-2004 at 10:17:15 AM
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aopen, another company that has lost my trust more than once

-------
<A HREF="http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/you.html" target="_new">please dont click here! </A>

Reply to phial
trooper11   03-03-2004 at 12:16:48 AM
- 0 +

oh well, i had issues with via for a long time, but they have donea nice chipset and so ill go with them. as far as aopen goe,s ive never had trouble with them, so its worth the risk imho.

Reply to trooper11
Snaggle   03-04-2004 at 01:37:12 AM
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think you're almost right about that;but both the mobile bartons and good ddr 3500 or even 3200 are drying up fast.If you've already got mushkin level II pc3500 building around a mobile barton is certainly better than a amd 64;but without good ram to start with an amd 64 3000 is about the same price and will run perfectly on crucial ram and out perform the mobile barton too,unless one is exceptionally lucky with the overclock of the fsb and frequency-only problem is you're right about there being no good mobo's for the 64 :frown: .nvidia 3 250 anyone and socket 939 :cool: .

Reply to Snaggle
Snaggle   03-04-2004 at 01:55:59 AM
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mushkin 222 special pc3200 512mb is $159 at newegg and a gig $283,the choice is clearly between a much better cpu with bad mobos and an out dated cpu with a great mobo;then again one could aways reuse the gig of mushkin on socket 939;but it would be like ddr333 now with the hypertransport going up to 1000.

Reply to Snaggle
Spitfire_x86   03-04-2004 at 03:07:35 AM
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1 GHz HyperTransport will have 200 MHz Virtual FSB, just like 800 MHz HT. So value of PC3200/PC3500 isn't going to decrease with 1 GHz HT.

I would post the link, but I forgot where I've seen this (few days ago)

------------
<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A>

<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig</A> & <A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/benchmark.html" target="_new">3DMark score</A>

Reply to Spitfire_x86
Spitfire_x86   03-04-2004 at 03:09:58 AM
- 0 +

I found the link

<A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14432" target="_new">Click!</A>

------------
<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A>

<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig</A> & <A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/benchmark.html" target="_new">3DMark score</A>

Reply to Spitfire_x86
Snaggle   03-05-2004 at 01:43:12 AM
- 0 +

Nice link,hehe,good dual channel ddr400 is still worth buying for the future.Of course I still in general agree with Crashman and it would certainly be more fun to watercool a mobile xp than buy a 64 and fun it at stock speeds with crucial ram and its certainly smarter to just build a lackluster xp system until the 64 bit games come out.

Reply to Snaggle
TheRod   03-06-2004 at 04:45:45 AM
- 0 +

And you will be able to buy your video Upgrade with HL2, since some ATI Radeon 9600/9800 XT comes with a coupon for a copy of HL2.

--
Would you buy a GPS enabled soap bar?

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