Any more upgradaholics on here?

I learned my lesson with the AMD Athlon era. I managed to talk myself into about five upgrades (either RAM or CPU) in about two years, chasing extra performance. It was a nearly always a complete waste of money, even though it was a time when flight sims needed all the extra power they could eat. The final straw was upgrading to an AMD x2 3800 and... being incredibly disappointed.

The machine I'm typing on now is my main gaming and 'work' PC. It's an 4GB [email protected] with a 5870 graphics card and apart from being a little sluggish when I edit photos in Lightroom, it just handles everything I throw at it. So much so that I rarely bother turning on my other PC, an 8GB [email protected] with a 7950 which is set up with three (small) screens for my sim racing fix. Video editing it all I really need it for.

I do actually want to throw more money Overclockers' way, and definitely have the itch to upgrade this machine, but Intel's current mess of CPUs don't justify upgrading the sim racing machine and making the 2500k my main 'driver'.

The Pentium anniversary CPU very nearly got my wallet into gear, as it's the kind of CPU which overclocking and upgrading used to be all about. But although I think multicore CPUs have been a huge disappointment overall (outside of niche uses) if I'm going to have a daily use machine for another five years I'd like to go to 4 cores.

I keep hoping AMD will come up with something to really shake up innovation and restart the tech arms race (whether we really need the performance or not). But I think those days are over, especially now the next generation of rather weak consoles have set the path for gaming progress.
 
I just upgraded after eeking out 5 years of my last Pc (Q6600).

The stock AMD fan on the new kit is deafening the household so I feel really guilty for spending £50 on a re-furbished Corsair H100 kit.

So guilty I have agreed to a 13 hour shift on Saturday :(

I love having new kit but that 5 years with a couple of lower to middle of the range graphic card upgrades kept me running with games. Ok, not with ultra settings but respectable at least.
 
Third Opinion said:
So guilty I have agreed to a 13 hour shift on Saturday :(
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Ah, guilt-based overtime... a concept I am familiar with. :-) My worst 'upgrade' ever was a £1300 laptop in 2003 (it replaced a much older laptop). I was never very happy with it, even after getting the first one swapped, and guilt made me put in a lot of hours to 'erase' that mistake.

I should've stuck with my first instincts to send it back before it was too late! Now it still sits on a shelf nearby, reminding me not to be daft.

Well, not too daft, too often. ;-)
 
I really don't fancy a Mac. I have so little experience with using other OS like Linux or Mac OS X that I just can't be bothered/don't have the time to go through the learning curve or familiarising myself with them.

The new Google project Ara has me worried. I think it's a great concept to have phones whith upgradable parts, they are mini pocket computers after all, but I know I will just want to be buying new modules for it whenever they are released.

Does anyone else have get the upgrade twitch for anything other than computers?
 
As mentioned elsewhere:

Bishie said:
One of my biggest grievances with the PC platform is the advancement of hardware. I spent a considerable amount on my system, and it already feels dated in contrast to what's currently available. While people are flaunting their GTX 980s, I'm turning to my PS4 for some measure of comfort.

Now, you might argue that there is no obligation to upgrade, and one can simply tone down the graphics settings and still achieve a superior experience to the consoles. This, however, does not sit well with me. I'm a slave to the upgrade itch, but my wallet is no longer up to the task!
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Some upgrades are pointless and comparing benchmarks to gaming is a silly thing to do from the get go.

You mention upgrading RAM a lot, which a lot of people seem to do as they believe that having more helps when in most cases it does the complete opposite by putting more strain on your CPU's IMC and thus lower overclocks.

You have to determine the difference between upgrading for the benefit of performance across several benchmark/games or just because you want bigger numbers in an application. I could get a poor score in 3dMark compared to the 780/970/980 releases, but I'd still run today's games at max/ultra without dropping below 60 fps.

You have to draw the line somewhere as you are literally wasting money for no benefit, like buying 2 980's to game on a 1080p screen for example.
 
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