Upgrading in October.

Pete.Dakota · 11 Jun 2011 at 03:58

I'm going to be upgrading in October before BF3. Got a few questions.

1. Can we expect the new generation of Nvidia/ATI GPUs by then?

2. Will the 2500k likely still be the processor to get, or is there something else on the horizon?

3. Going on past releases, does the launch of new generation GPUs immediately drop the prices for the previous generation? Or does it normally take a few weeks/months for the prices to drop?

hybrid572 · 11 Jun 2011 at 08:31

1. Possibly

2. If AMD get their posteriors in gear, Bulldozer might be out, but it's been delayed a lot of times already. Besides, nobody's sure if Bulldozer will outstrip the 2500k for gaming anyway.

3. Generally speaking, prices tend to rearrange themselves fairly quickly, but bear in mind that the price point you're aiming at may not be one of the early release ones, so you could get shafted here.

Pete.Dakota · 11 Jun 2011 at 16:21

Do you mean that the early released new gen GPUs may just be the lower end models?

Stoner81 · 11 Jun 2011 at 16:27

The 2500K will possibly be the CPU to buy depending on how good/bad Bulldozer is/isn't. Having said that though the 1155 sockets (Sandy Bridge) will support the new Ivy Bridge chipset via a EUFI/UEFI/BIOS (not sure which way the letters are) update.

(My thanks to stulid for the info on the 1155 sockets

cheers dude!)

Stoner81.

hybrid572 · 11 Jun 2011 at 18:11

It's really not worth getting s1155 as a stepping stone to 2011, no matter whether they're compatible or not. I believe 1155 and 2011 are intended to run in parallel anyway.

Certainly, if you bought an i5 2500K in October, it would run all the latest and greatest games until you decided to upgrade your computer a good few years down the line, and no matter how good Bulldozer is, that's still the case. The question, really, is whether Bulldozer can put out similar amounts of gaming power for less money- and importantly, whether Intel will attempt to compete on price.

Stoner81 · 11 Jun 2011 at 18:23

hybrid572 said:
The question, really, is whether Bulldozer can put out similar amounts of gaming power for less money- and importantly, whether Intel will attempt to compete on price.

+1,000,000!

Enough said

Stoner81.

olivier renault · 11 Jun 2011 at 18:58

Intels are selling like hot cakes. I wouldn't be surprised if they drop the 2500K / 2600K price at Bulldozer release just to throw a spanner in AMD's plan. And that's if Bulldozer is competitive enough. Let's face it, it's AMD's own fault really.

hybrid572 · 11 Jun 2011 at 19:08

olivier renault said:
Intels are selling like hot cakes. I wouldn't be surprised if they drop the 2500K / 2600K price at Bulldozer release just to throw a spanner in AMD's plan. And that's if Bulldozer is competitive enough. Let's face it, it's AMD's own fault really.

Very true. Processors aren't ongoing purchases; people just buy when they're ready to upgrade, and ever since SB dropped, people have only bought AMD chips if they're on a super razor thin budget- and even then, the i3 2100 is a serious contender for the gaming market, particularly as there's major upgrade potential on the same socket. AM3 is dead in the water.

Every day that AMD hasn't released Bulldozer, it's not competitive at all, and even if AMD pull off a super duper trick and release some kind of super quad core that's 4GHz at stock and clocks to 5+, with similar IPCs and a lower price tag, Intel can simply drop their prices and everybody buys Intel again because all their friends have an awesome Intel processor.