PCA Forums

Seeing all this new hardware come out mainly new radeon XT's K8's and P4EE's. I wanted to see how everyone felt about them, Should we gobble them up now? or wait for a bit more developed products come out?

I gata say, the first gen of K8 stuff really dosnt have many if any bugs. (at least out of the ordnary MS stuff). I mean if you are loaded, and since you have the p4ee on the list you must be, the Athlon FX 51 is a Far superior chip/technology. Wish I was getting one, but I am getting the athlon 64 3200+, still very nice but half the price.

Greg

in the PC world, it is never the right time to buy, because when you do fianlly buy something, the better comes out in a few weeks, or the price drops alot

DoPeY5007

Well, that might be true that there's never "THE" right time ... but there're often wrong times to invest (if yer have the moolah to buy the big toys).



So lets see .... right now is a bad time if yer want to buy highend that's still upgradable in a year.

Videocards: It's almost always the right time to buy what you can afford, something faster will always be around the next corner. But you might not want to buy the highest end cause that one won't run in the next generation mobos when PCI Express replaces AGP.

CPU: The top CPU are great (well, that was to be expected) but I wouldn't buy right now if yer looking at the highend.

- Intel: P4EE is too expensive for even most of the rich kids and you might have a tough time to find a mobo that works with them (that one needs a lot of power).
Prescott is just around the corner BUT we have to see what mobos will support it (possible power problem) AND there'll be a move to a new socket later this summer, Socket 775 .

- AMD: You might be fine with the regular Athlon64 but you shouldn't invest in Athlon FXs cause there'll soon be a redesign for CPU/mobo for the 939 socket. The 939 socket boards will have a different CPU pinout, they should be cheaper cause they need less layer and they'll support unregistered memory.

Mobo: Soon there'll be some big changes, AGP (and partially PCI) are to be replaced by PCI Express, ATX formfactor will be replaced by BTX formfactor (which also requires new cases etc).


So, looking at all those really big changes coming later this year I'd say it's right now a really bad time to spend the big cash on a new highend system. Buy one step below the highend and save the money towards a highend system with all the new technology later this year.