Who here is buying a new pc soon?

[Lindathedwarfer]

Who here is buying a new pc soon?

How much are you going to spend?

[Intangir]

<---- Me. Not quite a total overhaul, but a significant upgrade to be sure.

Q3 price cuts on 7/22 look to place the E6850 and Q6600 under $300. I planned to wait until November-ish for the GeForce 9's to come out and see what becomes the best price/performance mid-high card and would've liked to wait for an X38 board, but waiting for new things is a perpetual thing and I'm several years overdue for an upgrade as it is. My motherboard is about shot (caps aren't looking too good and voltages beginning to go wacky), the PSU fan is approaching a noisy demise, and so on. So I've been planning the upgrade.

As for how much I'm planning to spend... I'm a stingy person, and not a very big modern-era gaming enthusiast. I'm trying to keep it below $1000USD as a guide, but might make an exception if I feel it's worth it. Here's what I have planned:

CPU: Q6600 or E6850. I like the sound of "Quad Core" although I'm leery about being able to utilize its full potential. Most games just aren't multicore and the only things I really know of that make use of 4 cores are things like encoding, rendering, etc. Nevertheless it's cheap and, hopefully, developers will start pumping out games and programs that utilize multicore in the near future to keep up with the trend of CPUs today. It seemed like Alan Wake was going to enjoy 4 cores and I think I read Valve getting onboard, too. So at this point, I'm leaning pretty hard on the Q6600.

Motherboard: Some P35 (Bearlake; Bearlake-X is X38 JFYI) motherboard. Right now I'm leaning towards the DS3R from Gigabyte. They have a revision that supports DDR3 out for about $30-40 more, but I don't plan on getting DDR3 while it's this expensive and "slow". I'll probably save that money and just get the regular DS3R for ~$130 and use the money saved to go toward a better board in the future when DDR3 is more common and is equipped with a newer chipset. But this may vary depending on what's on sale when I go to order.

GPU: As for video card, I'm fairly sold on the 8800GTS I just have been debating whether or not to get a 640MB or save the money on the 320MB. Since I don't game in high resolution (these days 1280x1024 is considered "low") or have much interest in most of the stuff on the horizon (save for Bioshock), I think the 320MB would fit my needs just fine. On the other hand, 640MB would be nice to have in case future games start needing the extra memory and especially after reading the recommended specs for Bioshock. Decisions, decisions.

RAM: 2GB of DDR2 6400, cas4 should get me some decent mileage. I actually already ordered this just the other day before Corsair's $40 rebate expired. I feared RAM prices will go up as summer winds down and didn't think I'd come across a better deal in the weeks leading up to the end of the month.

MISC: The rest of the stuff is pretty standard. A 400W Fortron PSU, 320GB SATA Barracuda, some AS5 and a few case fans to replace the old rickety ones I've been using all these years--one owes its life to some sewing machine oil. Will probably get an X-Fi in the future, and perhaps a Raptor. But for now this will do.

All said, it comes to about ~$960 without rebates/tax/shipping. Not the beefiest of machines, but it'll be a welcome upgrade from my current machine: XP 3000, 9800XT, 1GB PC2700. I had just played through The Longest Journey again the other day and wanted to move straight into Dreamfall, but I only get around 20fps in it. I even get 20-30 FPS in WolfET in certain places (hint: radar), and even worse FPS than that when I played HL2DM (overwatch) at a LAN. So, yeah. It's about time I upgraded.

[Intangir]

Hmm. On second thought, the E6750 is looking pretty attractive since it should see a cut to <$200. Lighter on price, power, and heat which is nice and I'd love to avoid the headache of aftermarket cooling. Performs better on single and double threaded programs than the Q6600 (which basically constitute the vast majority of games out now)--not that CPU matters too much in current/old games of course. Might be smarter to just go that route and wait and watch the quad-core utilization unfold instead of trying to anticipate it. Then I could upgrade if and when I actually needed it and hopefully by then the new fab shrink will have been out for a long enough time to be nicely affordable.

The first of many headaches in upgrading.

[Mochan]

I'm also going to get an upgrade, probably not a new PC altogether.

I need to replace my Mobo and CPU, Athlon 64 S939 isn't too tough I need a C2D (will probably get an e6600). After that I will probably get an 8800GTS. That's pretty much it, and in fact I may opt not to upgrade my video card yet.


I will probably be spending about $1000 US more or less, half that if I don;t get a GPU. Pricing is different here in my country so no use really looking at my purchases from that angle.

The Mobo and CPU I am looking at will come up to around $357 US while the GPU is about $470US.

[PapaSmurf]

I just upgraded to 3 gigs of ram from 1 gig and let me tell you it makes a world of difference and I have an ATI x800 XT. From here on out I don't play to upgrade for a year or 2. I can play most games now at just near full settings, so I figure the games that come out in the next couple of years will be on medium. I'm still using a mobo that has an AGP interface and only takes DDR ram and with DDR3 out and DDR4 on the horizon I figure the next upgrade for my PC will be a complete overhaul I.E. I'll have a new PC.

It's gonna cost me but in I'm saving up for that new computer budget as we speak.

[ilnadmy]

My Alienware just died on me again yesterday, so I'm tossing the b**** out and hopefully getting this:

http://www.amazon.com/Pavilion-DV9540US-Notebook-Processor-Premium/dp/B000RNI642/ref=dp_return_1/104-9001436-0151117?ie=UTF8&n=541966&s=pc

$1,199.99 after a $150 rebate, and specs are:

Intel Centrino 1.5 GHz Core 2 Duo (Santa Rosa)
2 GB RAM
GeForce 8600M 1023 (shared) MB
240 GB HDD
Windows Vista Home Premium
17'' screen

I also want to buy one of those laptop-cooling pads. Anyone know of a good one to get? I want to avoid the bullcrap I faced with the Alienware overheating, so I figure a $20 or so cooling pad would be a good investment.

[Mochan]

Man that Alienware's been a bigger headache than anything I've ever heard of!

Good luck with the new one man good riddance to bad rubbish.

[ilnadmy]

Yeah I know tell me about it. The one advantage I can think of though is that now whenever things like this happen to me (computer breaks down, hard drive gets wiped) I don't get mad. I just...don't care anymore.

But yeah, I'm really surprised how such a crappy company hasn't been sued yet. Oh well, onto greener pastures.