Upgrade Time

[stato]

Hello all.

I've had my pc for over 18 months now and am thinking that i'm sort of getting ready for an upgrade. I used to be fairly up to date with building computers, but since I was forced to change jobs, I've not been following the scene as much as I used to. I picked up a magazine the other day to get myself a bit more familar with the newer generation of hardware and was reading about pci express, next gen video cards and even talk of the atx case format being revised. Basically, What sort of timeline are we likely to see this technology implemented. There's no point in me upgrading now if the system will be obsolete (figure of speech. I understand existing hardware will still be supported, but if I'm gonna upgrade, I want the latest tech) by christmas.

thanks in advance

[chimpuk]

video cards are always evolving so it'll never be long before your out of date with them

as for the atx format though, I severely doubt that will be phased out anytime in the future...few years at the absolute least. I mean look, SATA drives have been available for a while now, yet 90% of people still buy IDE drives...it takes a long long time for technology to be phased out

Not heard anything about the PCI thing...but I wouldnt say theres any immediate need for it to be changed anyway

Just upgrade...as long as you get a motherboard that will support new CPU's and memory and gfx cards for a while you should be fine :)

[richskie]

M/f are just starting to release PCI-X cards & motherboards. Probably be some time yet before they become common. Don't think the atx format will change for the next couple of years. They would all have to agree on a common standard & then change their processes to make them.

[Virgin San]

IMO its a difficult time to be thinking of upgrading, you have the PCI-X thing to worry about but also concerns about the 64 bit chips as well as SATA (though thats a bit of a given when building a new machine).

I'm in a similar position in that my machine at home is a couple of years old now (P4 1.7) but at the moment its performance for what I use it to do is still very good, so I'm not thinking of upgrading until the dust settles a bit. Some would argue that the dust never settles, but I think things are particularly unsettled at the mo (because each of the changes mentioned means changes in mobo spec).

To my mind this issue depends a great deal on how you use your machine - for example its much more important for a heavy gamer, ripper or video editor to keep his machine up to spec than it is to a general user / science user like myself. I suppose another option is to get something right now and be prepared to upgrade again in another 12-18 months if that takes your fancy, there are lots of variables that are specific to you (like your bank balance, how you use your machine, how well your current machine works etc etc) so its really hard to be definitive.