New Pentium Chips, is it worth the wait?

[eliasuk98]

i'm ready to build my new system after selling my old one..i have around £1200 to spend, i've now waited a month for the x1900xt to come out and since then have been surviving with a p3 450mhz.. does the job for the net.. i've now been told that the conroe chips due to come out mid 2006.. is it worth the wait in your opinion, or shall i not suffer for that long and just get the new intel D 9XX chips.. its a long wait but if its meens my £1200 machine becomes old technology in 5months time, i'd rather wait .... any advice would be appreciated

 

[smids]

You could be waiting forever if you keep doing that but it is certainly worth it if you can.

First you have the Conroe coming out, probably around July-Sept we will see the nV G80 and ATi R600 which I believe bring full DX10 support, AMD are releasing M2 socket with DDR2 about this time (please consider this, given the fact that the AMD processors currently are superior to the Intel's) and Vista is around November (you can survive on XP till Nov).

 

[Sumanji]

Yikes I don't think I could survive 6 months+ on a P3-450 I'd say invest now! Could get a nice high end Athlon64 system, or maybe get a dual core Presler P4 and overclock the hell out of it (they aren't too shabby). For the graphics though I would wait until G71 is announced, unless you are totally mindset on an ATi card...

Suman

[edit] Thinking about it the P4 route might be clever... if you get an i975x board you could just drop in a Conroe when they are released (in theory). No need to change RAM, Mobo, Graphics etc. as your "infrastructure" is already in place!

 

[NathanE]

i'm ready to build my new system after selling my old one..i have around £1200 to spend, i've now waited a month for the x1900xt to come out and since then have been surviving with a p3 450mhz.. does the job for the net.. i've now been told that the conroe chips due to come out mid 2006.. is it worth the wait in your opinion, or shall i not suffer for that long and just get the new intel D 9XX chips.. its a long wait but if its meens my £1200 machine becomes old technology in 5months time, i'd rather wait .... any advice would be appreciated

They will be worth the wait however even if you upgraded to a Presler or X2 right now you'd be just as pleased

Personally I'd get a Presler. They seem to have better bang per buck and overclocking potential than X2s. And since you're coming from an Intel system (presumably with an Intel chipset?) I think you would be slightly disappointed if for some reason the nForce/VIA chipset started giving you problems.

Upgrade now IMO.

 

[smids]

They will be worth the wait however even if you upgraded to a Presler or X2 right now you'd be just as pleased

Upgrade now IMO.

Not worth waiting for AM2 and DDR2?

 

[NathanE]

No because AM2 will be launched around the same time as Conroe anyway.

 

[monkeypants]

Now, let me explain;

I'm running a 4Ghz P4 630, 6800GT, 2Gb or ace-uss RAM so it's not worth me upgrading anything until Conroe comes along.
You'll be running a really old spec system, so unless you're ONLY going to be surfing the net it's worth upgrading now, there's lots of nice stuff out now and first gen stuff (CPUs excepted, conroe will need a new chipset ) are usually a bit poo.

You could get a semi-decent system now and then super-upgrade when Conroe comes (I hear it'll be better than AMD's stuff).

 

[kchakkar]

Wait for the Conroe. It will not work on the 975X board (even with bios upgrade) so it's pointless buying anything yet unless you can afford it. Wait for the broadwater chipset, that will work with conroe.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

If you are happy with a PIII-450 for what you need then I'd wait

Conroe/AM2/etc isn't that far away now and as you've already waited a long time it'd be worth waiting for a few more months

If you really want to upgrade now then an X2 or PD 900 will be fine. Don't get the PD 800 series under any circumstances as these are very poor CPUs

The X2 is faster than the PD 900 series, but the PD does start at a cheaper price point and it is proving to be a huge overclocker.

If you want SLI problems have been reported with the nForce 4 Intel chipset (the AMD one is fine). If you want Crossfire though (as suggested by your choice of ATI) then Intel do the 975 chipset which is a nice, Crossfire supporting chipset

 

[eliasuk98]

someone on here

suggested that theres an intel motherboard out there called Intel's D975X M/B anadtech have reviewed it to be pretty good (i still cant find one for sale in the uk), it supports 1333fsb and the new conroe chip with the 975chipset... could this be an option, and then just upgrade my choice of cpu to the new conroe when its available.. otherwise ill just wait till asus reveals their new motherboards, hopefully soon and upgrade likewise later...

there is still no confirmation whether the asus p5wd2 and the p5wd2-e motherboards will support the conroe chips! anyone?

 

[kchakkar]

suggested that theres an intel motherboard out there called Intel's D975X M/B anadtech have reviewed it to be pretty good (i still cant find one for sale in the uk), it supports 1333fsb and the new conroe chip with the 975chipset... could this be an option, and then just upgrade my choice of cpu to the new conroe when its available.. otherwise ill just wait till asus reveals their new motherboards, hopefully soon and upgrade likewise later...

there is still no confirmation whether the asus p5wd2 and the p5wd2-e motherboards will support the conroe chips! anyone?

There are 975X boards available in the uk:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/asus_intel_motherboards.html

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Gigabyte.html

Also according to some articles the 975x will not support the conroe chip, even with a bios update. There might be a 975xe board which will support it. Heres the link:

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=3167

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20060202133551.html