Building now vs waiting until November

[Uniqueuponhim]

I'm a bit concerned that if I build a computer right now, I won't be able to upgrade it without replacing almost everything. The first of the Nehalem processors, the Bloomfields, will be coming out in November. They use a new chipset, which means down the road if I want to upgrade my processor, I'll also have to get a new mobo, and since the new mobo will likely only support DDR3, I'll also need to get new RAM. That's a lot of money just to upgrade the processor.

On the other hand, if I wait until November and get the 2.66GHz Bloomfield instead of getting the Q6600 now, the mobo I get with it will be ready for the higher end Bloomfields, as well as the Westmere after it comes out in 2009-10. That way when I want to upgrade later on, I can simply replace the processor without having to worry about the mobo or RAM.

However, waiting would mean being without a decent gaming computer for an extra couple of months (which I can live with) but it would also mean spending a bunch of extra money for a marginally better processor, just so I can be future-proof. Not to mention the fact that I will undoubtedly have a very small selection of motherboards to choose from, and they will likely be significantly more expensive as well. To top it all off, the Q6600, overclocked, will probably be able to last me a pretty long time anyway so there may not even be a need to wait a month or two just so my mobo will be ready for the Westmere.

What do you guys think?

 

[alehkcis]

only problem i can see is if you wait for the new processors,they will be priced high, and you have to wait for another price drop, but if your going with 2.66, maybe there is not much difference with the q6600, and we are not sure if the bloomfield is a good OCer.btw as i know there will be a price drop of q6600 in october it might be around 170 to 185$ so there will be a 100$ or more margin from the bloomfield,which might be priced at around 300$ more or less.

 

[Peter.Cort]

if you keep in this mindset you'll be waiting to upgrade forever. you have to jump in at some point and just get something that will do what you want, unless you have tons of disposable money that you can spend on parts and you can stay cutting edge. otherwise just get a nice 45nm quad some real nice ddr2, a good gfx card and a nice board and you'll be happy.

 

[Uniqueuponhim]

It's not about always waiting for something a little better or for slightly lower prices or better value. It's about getting setup that I can upgrade in the future vs one that I will have to spend a lot more money to fully replace in the future.

 

[Peter.Cort]

if you bought a 775 setup and a p4 like 4 years ago when the prescotts were mainstream, and you wanted to upgrade all you could upgrade to was a pentium D, not a c2d let alone a c2q.

also if you get a setup now with a q6600 and drop like 900-1000 on the setup, when it comes time to upgrade you'll be upgrading all of it anyway.

 

[alehkcis]

q6600 and bloomfield will last you 2-3 years .

 

[zmatt]

Depends entirely on what your standards are. There are some members here who buy the very best and sell it as soon as something new comes out. Others here have a set cycle of years that they go with a system. For me, I skip every other generation. I had a s939 opteron, I skipped the Conroe and got the wolfdale. I'm skipping Nehalem and depending on how things go I will either be upgrading to sandy bridge or whatever AMD has at that point.

 

[veg1992]

Lol I've skipped 4 Gens.. hahaha

But Nehalem is going to be a bit faster than Yorkfield, but problem is, we know its not aimed at Gaming, and we don't know for sure if those benchmarks we got so far for gaming were with bad drivers (like Intel said) or not..

 

[zmatt]

Well, one thing that we need to remember is games are more cpu dependent. If nehalem turns out to be a stinker then well too bad for the early adopters.