Upgrading end of '08: Nehalem, Penryn?

Hey, I am upgrading my PC entirely around Christmas this year. Now I'm in a twist. I don't know precisely when the Nehalem is coming out, although it's not a problem for me to wait a few months into 09. Shouldn't be more than 3 though.

In any case, I could either upgrade to Penryn hardware and go for something along the lines of Q9550 (speaking price category) - or wait for Nehalem and buy one of their midrange products, which automatically leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I want to focus on CPU (and chipset/RAM) because I will keep my GPU, but I don't want to spend around £1000 to go "highend" with Nehalem. How much, if any, performance gain will I get from a Nehalem that will be priced around £300 compared to a Penryn Quad of that price?

I know the answers will include speculation but I'm happy for anything at this point, as I'm puzzled as to whether the "downgraded" Nehalem chips are really worth going for instead of a highend Penryn.
 
you would spend a premium on newness and on DDR3. also what is coming is only the high end nehalem platform (socket 1366), socket 1160 coming later (like six monthes). Weirdly enough Intel has done a socket split exactly like socket 939 and 754 before. I expect motherboards to be high end and costly, especially for getting one in Christmas.

I also expect a nehalem on 1160 to have the same performance as on 1366. The larger socket is overprovisionned on bandwith to make room for future six-core and eight-core monsters.

check this
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49560
it will still be reasonable to get a penryn.
but what you call a "midrange nehalem" would only be a non "Exxtreme Edition", it will be a friggin' fast CPU.
 
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so do you consider the ~2.9ghz bloomfield a midrange nehalem? cause thats about the LIMIT i would ever spend on a cpu alone. will it literally tear penryns apart?

but if motherboard prices are through the roof at around 200 you can forget all that and i'd rather pick up a cheap penryn setup to be honest. what do you think?
 
I think you'd be much better served getting a mobo with the new socket and the non-extreme Bloomfield. Even if there is a $100 premium on the mobo (hopefully not), the ability to use it for a mid-life cpu upgrade (and without tearing down your entire machine) would be a big consideration for me. Personally, I really dislike buying a mobo I can't get one decent mid-life upgrade out of --even tho I may have done it to myself this time because I didn't have a choice; I needed a new rig as the old one had gotten unacceptably flaky.

Plus I think putting HT back into the cores is going to be a significant win for multi-tasking. HT support has pretty well exploded due to multi-core support. From what I'm hearing, clock-for-clock, Bloomfield will rock vs Penryn.
 
Okay. You're talking about the $250-550 Bloomfield CPUs right? I think I can afford that. You make a good point regarding the upgrade. I'd rather invest in the low-end-Bloomfield and a more expensive motherboard + RAM and upgrade CPU in a year when much better ones for lower prices are available, keeping my socket & RAM.
 
Only problem is if you get a dud of a mobo.

I will just say that you should wait to get a mobo that has been out awhile and has good reviews. Otherwise the midlife upgrade will be nonexistant for you.
 
I would wait a little bit more to upgrade say March of next year unless you really have to because the price of DDR3 ram is just killer. And we all know that it is going to drop drop drop!
 
Good 'nuff. I can wait those few months into 09 and then upgrade my graphics card as well. Thanks.

Also suryad your rig is pretty badass :)
 
hehe thanks jandlecack. Ever since I got a sweet job after university, I had been itching to get a badass rig as you put it. Burned through the bank account but oh well :)

My next upgrade should just be the video cards and hard drives replaced with SSDs once they are cheap, large and really really fast. Not going to upgrade the CPU anytime soon. Perhaps when 32 nm is out I will consider an Extreme Edition then as well.
 
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