Is now the wrong time to buy?

mulpsmebeauty said:
Well if you'd bought a GTX at release this wouldn't hold true, because it's been a year and only now is something 'just round the corner'. If you buy new gen tech on its release you are effectively maximising its useful life, assuming you don't buy every new increment of performance improved hardware that comes on the market.
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i think thats the point he was trying to make, that if you wait for new hardware you should buy it on the date because the longer you wait the more chance there is of there being something new around the corner

i am in a similar prediciment but to be honest there is never a truly good time to buy technology because it is constantly changing but i personally will love my new set up because i have been using an old system with a ati x300 for the last 4 years.
 
I personally think its a great time to buy. Only a year ago I really couldn't imagine buying a quad core cpu that will overclock to 3.6GHz fairly easily for under £160 inc vat or 4GB of fast DDR2 memory for around £70.

The stuff around the corner is mostly refreshed components. You pay a little more, you get a little more kinda stuff (Penryn, DDR3, etc). The real big leaps are 1-2 years away yet.

My advice is buy now; you'll get really fast components for a great bang-for-buck ratio across the board pretty much.

Also if you overclock, your investment will remain high-end for a much longer period. In fact it may remain faster than the top-end (~£600) cpus (at stock) for well over a year and even after that will still be considered fast for another year or 2.

I can't actually think of a better time to buy components anytime in the past when compared to today.
 
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Funny thing is my old PC has become obsolete in almost exactly the same way as yours. I got a 939 processor (a 3500) and an AGP motherboard, just as PCI-express was coming out. PCI-express was completely overpriced back then tho, heh.

I can't see that quad-core being made redundant any time soon though mate, the new ones will be a bit faster and the q6600 might drop in price a bit, but it should be fine.

There's no way an 8800gt is a bad idea too, it so completely annihilates the opposition at bang per buck. Chances are that the new gts costs you £250 or so, and gives you another 30% on the gt... it depends if you really need that and you're willing to pay the extra.
 
oh and i'm thinking of getting a e2180 if i don't get a quad... i can't see being a bad purchase anytime soon unless they literally start giving them away in cereal boxes.
 
Do you need/want it now? If so upgrade now.

Are you not really in any rush and happy to wait until next year? If so then you could wait.

I think its that simple.
 
Well i'm torn whether i need/want it.

Tbh, 95% of us on here don't NEED the stuff we've want or got, but we all know the craic, it just doesn't work like that. :D

That aside, i've got a DS (with an R4) which i mainly play on these days, and a 360 with about 10 games which i hardly play.

I've just joined LoveFilm for 3 month for free which enables me to rent 360 games for free, and it looks like my dads bored of his Wii and i might be getting a loan for a few months, and again i can loan from LoveFilm for nothing.

So a wide range of free gaming there.

So probably not since all i really use my PC now for in terms of gaming is FM08, but that would change if i got an upgrade.
 
i say go for it, if you keep hesitating you will never get one just get it and enjoy it, forget about the new things coming out because new things come out all the time just upgrade to those when you can afford to. i dont see anything wrong with being 6 months/ a year behind the current hardware, it makes it cheaper and as long as you are happy with it why does it matter?
 
artaxerxes said:
Everything is cheap, so buying now is great .. but will be even cheaper in post christmas sales.
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Couldn't go all through Christmas without a decent PC :D Just upgraded to quad core with 8800GT, if a better card comes out after Christmas just sell it and upgrade when its cheap enough :)
 
Games are largely single-threaded. There, the faster clockspeed of the 6750 is a benefit. In other tasks such as photo and video editing the programs are heavily multithreaded and benefit from the extra cores.
 
This is what I thought but I cant see why everyone is recommending quad cores so much when most people who ask regarding to upgrade options only want to game.

Surely the quad cores (even the energy efficient ones) use more power than a c2d aswell?
 
id wait mate, only because you know what you are waiting for, usually people wait and dont know whats actually coming, if you can wait, wait, and get the 9800.

@ dokko, id go for the quad core any day, you can overclock the hell out of the 6600, and make it faster than the slightly faster dual 6750. Look at me, I'm on 3.6 on air! and with speedstep enabled, I can run my rig almost silently!
 
fobose said:
This is what I thought but I cant see why everyone is recommending quad cores so much when most people who ask regarding to upgrade options only want to game.

Surely the quad cores (even the energy efficient ones) use more power than a c2d aswell?
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They use more power, but certainly not double the amount. I recommend them to gamers becasue3 it's perhaps the best proc you can get. It overclocks like mad and so-called future games should take further advantage of the increased processing power.
 
In the same boat here, Ive currently got a 20% built PC (see sig)
Im just hoping my 6 year old harddrives can last out till next year, if not i willhave to start using my new 500gb WD. as motherboards go,ive come pretty much full circle.

Im going to go with a cheap p35 board probably a gigabyte...benches ive seen on the lastest x38 boards just dont justify the upgrade.
DDR2 is cheap as chips and the Q6600 G0 is bargain.

Only thing Im actually holding out for is a leviathan of a graphics card....which will hopefully be available by the time ive saved up and purchased the above stuff.

Even the arrival of penryn, in my view is just an incremental evolvement of the kentsfield/conroe family....the big news will be the real new intel chips hit the shops late next year.

So my thiking is: buy now, but buy upper mid-range rather than high end, because this time next year you will be thinking DDR3 and new uber intel chips, a complete platform change basicly.
 
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