Core Component Upgradeability

[Flayum]

I plan on building a new PC next April-ish. This should be around the time AMD releases their new M2 Socket. This is a hard deadline, I can only upgrade in April (don't ask).

At this time, M2 motherboards will not be of the greatest quality & the X2 5000+ will be extremely expensive. So, I was wondering, with the 4800+ not really differing in performance (I'll assume), should I just go for the old 939 socket mobo? Or in otherwords, should my core componants (mobo & PSU) be easily upgradeable (M2 socket) or should I not bother with M2 and use 939. My logic is that if I went for M2, by the time I would want to upgrade my CPU, there will already be something better out.

I hope that makes sense. I think it boils down to: Should I allow myself CPU upgradeability or, with the pace of change, should I get slightly older stuff for cheap?

On the same topic, what will the advantages be for M2 (besides DDR2 compatibilty & this virtualization stuff)?

 

[Trifid]

Can you wait until April to make your descision?

Your case, PSU hdd and cd drives and video card can be kept, and the CPU and motherboard have to be changed if you later want to get M2. But tbh. I would jump onto the M2 socket as soon as possible. Being honest, I would wait a little bit to see what it brings. I will have a little look sometime after summer. The advantages will be ultimately better performance with M2. What more could you ask for? The motherboards should be great on release. The only problem would be, is deciding what motherboards are good. As when I went with socket 939, I went on what the companies were like last generation. Which isn't the best thing.

As I said earlier, wait until April, as you will know what you want better, you never know, Intel may make a great gaming CPU, or the M2 is terrible (like the pressots were due to heat problems.)

 

[Flayum]

But...

I can wait until April, its just that I want to be prepared.

The problem with M2 is that it'll be really expensive & I only see the 5000+ coming out first ($1000!). What I'm really concerned about is if I get an M2 socket, if I really wanted to upgrade my CPU at a later date, wouldn't it make more sense to just completely swap out my mobo at that time? Whereas if I just went with the 4800+ or even 4400+, I could use it for quite some time & then buy a new mobo, CPU, & RAM.

What worries me is that buying in April will cause my PC to be at the very end of many product cycles. Before Vista comes out, nVidia's *80 GPU, Perpendicular HDD (with who knows what kind of interface), & advanced M2 AMD processors. I'm just so worried that I'm getting screwed into a short PC life here...

 

[gaara]

Big difference between socket 939 and M2 processors will be memory bandwidth...I suspecy a faster HTT link combined with faster memory will lead to maximum memory bandwidth of about 11gb/sec compared to the current 6.4gb/sec AMD64 bandwidth

Actual architectural differences I suspect will be little to known, M2 will probably be built to accept quad core CPUs and the waffers will probably be made on a smaller 65nm process size

The 4800+ if you look at it is the equivelent of two 4000+ processors on one die which is high scale performance by current standards

Big difference as I said will be memory though

 

[Flayum]

I was thinking I could get a cheap mobo/3800+/1 GB DDR ram for then (April to Octoberish) since I don't really need super-high performance until then (I look foward to playing the Late 2006 games, such as Supreme Commander, UT2007, Spore, ect). Then selling my mobo/RAM/CPU on eBay & buying the M2 socket w/ DDR2 & a new mobo.

The thing is, this strategy will be more expensive and I might need to buy a new HDD (with all that I hear about Perpendicular HDD & something about some other new HDD tech that only future mobo's will support).

 

[gaara]

Well you have to ask yourself if you really need the added performance or if you have an obsession with having the biggest and best right now...I would personally just buy an AMD64 that nicely fits your budget now as they overclock fairly well, give all around good performance, and are all around good processors especially for the price

When your AMD64 starts to get sluggish, then you can move on to bigger and better things, but I mean there's no point fixing what isn't broken

 

[Flayum]

I don't feel the need to have the biggest/best now. I just want to run those Q4 2006 Games smoothly with all the eyecandy on @ 1600x1200. Vista is also a neccessity, and I've heard it has MONSTER requirements. Although I know this has more to do with the graphics card, you want to keep your system balanced.

What it really comes down to is will today's current 939 processors (& their motherboards) still be suitable for gaming for the next 2 years or so; or I'm I better off with getting a 'temporary' setup in April & then upgrading next Autumn?

 

[gaara]

I would suspect that Vista would only be poorly optimized for memory load but that has always been the case with any Windows version and you can easily tweak your system to avoid that...additionally, Vista I should hope takes advantage of both 64 bit processes but also multiple threads which should ease performance...operating systems are not particularily "demanding" though

Games are all GPU based these days now, and especially if you are able to add a PPU to your system when they become availible your actual CPU workload will drastically decrease...anything 3500+ or above will easily last 1-2 years before you start to notice terrible gameplay and that would be much due to multiple threads that single core processors will begin to struggle with

 

[Flayum]

Ok, to summerize...

Although the M2 will have better overall performance, it's not worth it to get the best on the block. I should go with a current generation (939) motherboard and processor, be it dual-core or not, and then upgrade the whole shebang in a year or two (or until the processor [overclocked, of course], begins to slow down my gaming. I should invest more in my GPU and worry less about the power that I don't need.

Which has led me to the conclusion of... Getting an AMD X2 4400+/4800+ CPU with 2 GB of high quality DDR RAM. I know AMD plans to continue 939 until the end of 2006 and if I have any performance issues, I can always upgrade to a newer 939 processor. The only thing that worries me is the DDR RAM & its performance in a year or two when compared to DDR3. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. My next problem it whether to go SLI or not. I could splurge and go for a SLI mobo w/ 1 7800 GTX, then upgrade to a second in SLI when the time is right. But what worries me about that is support for WGF2.0 which appears with the nVidia *80 GPU, which I also heard will appear with an internal-SLI. I don't know if internal SLI could combine with external SLI for a quad-core GPU setup. If not, why not just get a non-SLI mobo & get an internal SLI GPU?

 

[gaara]

DDR3 will not come into the picture until 2007-2008...we're talking about DDR2 here...in order to give you an idea of memory bandwidth difference between 939 HTT and M2 HTT you could probably compare AMD64 bandwidth to XP bandwidth...that being said an XP running at 2.2GHz or more is still sufficent for today's standards easily...a 4400+ will last you QUITE a while

7800GTX will play anything out right now maxed and pretty much anything in the next year maxed...you don't need to bother with SLI as it only offers about 40-60% performance gains over a single card