Worth building at the moment?

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14 Aug 2007
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447
Hi,

I was thinking about what new technologies are going to come out, and whether it would be best to leave a build until around November when the new GFs are out.

What do you recommend? Should I get a cheap card and then upgrade or leave it till Nov?

Also what other technologies are coming out over the next few months, just so I catch as many as possible? :)
 
If you keep waiting for new stuff to come out then you will never have a new pc. Now is an excellent time to build. The Intel cpu's are at a very low price and the Q6600 quad is amazing value for money. Who would have thought 12 months ago that you would get a quad core for as little as £162? At the other end of the scale is the amazing value for money 2140/2160 cpu's. If you are into clocking then these are undoubtably the best bang for buck you can get.

Motherboard wise, the P35 chipset boards have not long come out and are proving to be solid performers. Memory may increase in price as well. DDR3 has little or no advantage over DDR2 at the moment either. You could wait for the X38 chipset boards to come out which will feature PCI-E 2.0. I believe these boards are due out soon.

As for the gpu, you could get a cheap one for the time being and then get one of the new ones when they come out around November but personally i would'nt. I would get the best card that you can afford now. That will be more than enough to cope with just about anything you can throw at it at this time. I certainly would'nt get a G92/98 (whichever it is) until at least 3-4 months after they come out. By then the prices will have stabilised and any bugs should be sorted, although we are still waiting for Nvidia to sort out the annoying slowdown bug on the 8800 series (mainly affects the 8800gts 320mb)!!! If the 8800 series is anything to go by then the driver support will be abysmal for the first few months as well.
 
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Cheers, so you reckon I should clock up a processor?
 
It's completely up to you. If you don't want to clock go with a AMD AM2 rig. If you do want to clock then get a C2D or quad and get clocking. Just about any one will murder an AMD when clocked. I would go fo a X-Fi soundcard over an Audigy though. I have the same DVDRW as that and it is a good solid drive. I also have the next OCZ Gamexstream up, the 700w and it is a excellent psu although you will get people suggesting nothing but the Corsair HX 520/620. What sort of budget do you have? If you give a budget then some of the guys can spec you a decent rig depending on if you want to clock or no.
 
maybe wait a little, the AMD kit is just about to be launched (if you are an AMD fan).

As mentioned above, you really just need to decide 'today I spend the cash' , then get the best spec for that amount. Once it's spent, it's de-valued by 25% already.
 
Thanks for the help.

My budget is about £1k, maybe up to £1 050 or £1 100, but don't really want to go past £1k.

I will overclock up to and above 3GHz, if anyone can suggest multipliers and FSB then that would be great.

Thanks.
 
addylad said:
Thanks for the help.

My budget is about £1k, maybe up to £1 050 or £1 100, but don't really want to go past £1k.

I will overclock up to and above 3GHz, if anyone can suggest multipliers and FSB then that would be great.

Thanks.

The try it and see approach is always best, but somewhere between 333 and 400MHz with a 9x multiplier chip like the e2160 or the q6600 would be good.
 
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