How do you keep up?!

ph3onix

ph3onix

ph3onix

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Joined
14 Oct 2008
Posts
44
Location
Boro, UK
Everyone always wants the latest and fastest motherboard, graphics, cpu, etc. But how can you keep up at the extremely quick rate they manufacture new and improved products? I look at people's sigs in these forums and many have the latest products all the time. Availability of cash is the main restricting factor for me at the minute as I'm a uni student, but I'd like to do this when I start a new job.

Do you consistently manage to make a decent trade off between the "only just superceded" and the "brand new"? Or is there significant loss in doing that? For example, I'd like a new £200 graphics card, but I'd only make maybe £40 at max for mine.

Where do you draw the line and say "OK, this will do for a couple of years..."? Or don't you? ;)
 
I generally only upgrade when things start struggling, that said though I've had the core of my system for nearly two years but have upgraded the graphics card 3 or 4 times - keeping up with the latest.

My E6600 has latest an awful long time, this is because I've had it overclocked ever since I got it. The Core 2's are such good value for money.

If you want to keep the whole system up-to-date though you're going to need to be spending at least every 6months.
 
When I bought my Pentium4 four years ago, it was one of the first in a new generation of machines, dual core was just coming out, Intel had their new Hyper-Threading technology, and my friends were amazed to see it could decompress several RARs whilst burning a DVD and also playing a DIVX.

I kept the core of that system until just a few months ago, when I reached the 2GB max limit on the motherboard, and upgraded to vista, which chugged somewhat.
As mishima says above, you just upgrade the graphics card a few times until it becomes obvious the cpu can't work comfortably anymore. Now I have a monster with 8GB RAM, which will remain with me until I can afford another total upgrade. I intend to change my graphics card in about a year, maybe again the year after, I expect the CPU and mobo to remain for at least three years.
 
My AMD 3500 lasted a good 3.5 years, mainly because it clocked high and ran relatively cool. Upgraded the ram once to an extra gig, but stuck with my graphics (6600le f_t_w) for 2 years, at which point I was snatched my mates hands off on a 1950 ultimate for 70 quid (1 week old). The key thing with upgrades i've found is judging your current system's performance against the current mainstream. New chips and bits will come out but 9 times out of 10 the performance increase isn't shocking. Having said that, as has always been the case the increase in performance is exponential, and i suspect that my E8400 will only last a year in comparison with its athlon predecessor.

As for my current 88gts 512, that was outdated by emerging gx2's and 48-- series cards no more than a month after i bought it. I don't think you can buy a component with the view to sell it on at all, unless you plan on buying and selling within 2 months of purchase... Best to buy reasonably big and expect little or nothing 2-3 years later. Doesn't bother me tbh. I get the use out of it and i'm happy. :)
 
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I too generally upgrade only when I have to for a particular task in hand. Happy with my E6600 too and last upgrade was for purposes of buying and playing with Vista as previous PC was not good enough - the very first P4 processors with rambus memory! Yuk.
Last build was just to have a play with mATX stuff and current urge is to buy mITX but I know it would be purely for novelty purposes, so resisting the urge to spend at the moment! I am starting to hate the look of ATX and mATX so I think I am being minimalist!
Not really a PC gamer so dont need to worry about keeping up to date with the latest or fastest...
 
I've had my current p4 about 4/5 years now and it chugs along happily with most stuff i throw at it, normally photoshop and the odd bit of older game gaming. It sure as h*ll wouldn't cope with crisys though and it's not great a video encoding any more.
did upgrade the gfx card back in march but i'm stuck with AGP till i can afford a new system.
Could have got a new desktop last year at uni but opted for a high spec lappy instead so i could use it in lectures.

Now i'm gainfully employed and saving up to get a new rig hopefully early next year, gotta pay off my massive overdraft at the same time thou
 
Ah its interesting to hear what you guys do. I tend to upgrade every few years, but by the time it comes to it...almost every component has been superceded by new technology so I begin to question whether its actually worth it.

I was also off-put by a rookie error I made a couple years ago on my old computer. Just when PCI-E was taking off, I upgraded my old GeForce 4 MX420 with a Radeon X800 GTO in AGP. However, the motherboard restricted it to x4, rather than x8, and I only purchased a cheap Micro ATX PSU off ebay (from Tailand or somewhere) to supply it. I was happy with it, playing BF2 until it fried about 4 months later...

So now i question whether components are worth upgrading or not. I suppose checking compatibility and buying better gear helps. I haven't ventured into overclocking anything at this stage as I dont fully understand the BIOS, water cooling, etc.
 
ph3onix said:
Ah its interesting to hear what you guys do. I tend to upgrade every few years, but by the time it comes to it...almost every component has been superceded by new technology so I begin to question whether its actually worth it.

I was also off-put by a rookie error I made a couple years ago on my old computer. Just when PCI-E was taking off, I upgraded my old GeForce 4 MX420 with a Radeon X800 GTO in AGP. However, the motherboard restricted it to x4, rather than x8, and I only purchased a cheap Micro ATX PSU off ebay (from Tailand or somewhere) to supply it. I was happy with it, playing BF2 until it fried about 4 months later...

So now i question whether components are worth upgrading or not. I suppose checking compatibility and buying better gear helps. I haven't ventured into overclocking anything at this stage as I dont fully understand the BIOS, water cooling, etc.
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Its not really hard mate just follow a few guides and its honestly so simple. I only upgraded about 4/5 weeks ago and before that I had an old computer for 2+ years. Im still using the same PSU and case.
In my opinion their is nothing worth paying 400 pounds for out their right now. Unless you want a big monitor hardware is simply not worth it (a 3.0GHz system with a half decent low priced graphics card can run vista movies and unrar and burn whatever you want when you want - all for under 200 pounds)

If their was new games worth spending 200 pounds on a graphics card on then maybe I would have spent more when i upgraded - but in my opinion your paying 200 pounds to play crysis - which in all honestly is an APPALING game compared to others on the market.

Thats why i decided for a low budget 180 pound upgrade on which i can run cod 1600 x 1200 full res aa everything high so easy. TF2 and all hl2 run full ress full detail. Anything else that is new runs I think its just people buying graphics cards to play crysis at an insanely high res with a stupid resolution - whats the point when its such a linear boring game?
 
x Darkchild said:
Its not really hard mate just follow a few guides and its honestly so simple. I only upgraded about 4/5 weeks ago and before that I had an old computer for 2+ years. Im still using the same PSU and case.
In my opinion their is nothing worth paying 400 pounds for out their right now. Unless you want a big monitor hardware is simply not worth it (a 3.0GHz system with a half decent low priced graphics card can run vista movies and unrar and burn whatever you want when you want - all for under 200 pounds)

If their was new games worth spending 200 pounds on a graphics card on then maybe I would have spent more when i upgraded - but in my opinion your paying 200 pounds to play crysis - which in all honestly is an APPALING game compared to others on the market.

Thats why i decided for a low budget 180 pound upgrade on which i can run cod 1600 x 1200 full res aa everything high so easy. TF2 and all hl2 run full ress full detail. Anything else that is new runs I think its just people buying graphics cards to play crysis at an insanely high res with a stupid resolution - whats the point when its such a linear boring game?
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Yeah you're right there. At the moment I'm kinda happy with my setup - it runs CoD4 on full spec at 1680x1050 and handles AutoCAD (for work) reasonably well. A new processor and graphics card wouldn't go amiss though if i had the money.
 
I think the best answer is to try not to "keep up" as such, and more try to buy something that you'll get the most out of over the time you use it...

Took me ages to work that one out though :(, i spent so much upping my graphics cards a few eyars ago (6600gt, x800gto2 and finally the 7800gt). Got to the 7800 and suddenly my 939 system couldnt really keep up :( (then again it stopped me from upgrading for a few years)

Did a min core2 update a few months ago (e8200...) to see what a fast pc was like and felt the 7800gt suddenly wasnt good, and then waited for the 4870.

But yeah the rest of the systems iv owned have all overclocked a fair bit if needed. (my opty did 3 gihz! and the core2 chips good for 4 but thats just silly)
 
I haven't kept up, I'm still on a 1.8 AMD XP, 512mb RAM, and a GeForce FX5200. Still building my new rig at the minute, so will be brought forward when it is finished.
 
This time next month there will be a sudden influx of Core i7 sigs probably. You have to think about it relatively though, just because you can't afford it doesn't mean everyone can't.

Some people earn £30k+, so it would be nothing to them. I remember reading something that the average salary in the UK was around £25k.
 
It may seem that everyone has the latest of everything due to the vast amount of members on the forums upgrading at different times, i never buy the cutting edge stuff, i buy the good stuff a while after it has been released where it's still good but not carrying the price premuim with it, i'm just upgrading now from my 2 year old machine to a Q6600 / Asus P5Q / ATI HD4850 gfx card and 4gb OCZ RAM. Currently been using a Athlon X2 4200, ASUS A8N SLI, 3 GB mixed ram and a geforce 7600GT
 
That is the problem with innovation. As soon as you buy a product there is a newer one out the next day making your one look outdated. Be thankful that us humans don't do this with wives/girlfriends! :)
 
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