New processor

[Dresden]

Well, today I was serious when I posted in the Crysis thread that I was going to be purchasing a new processor. I need help finding a good one though. Also suggestions for mobo's are welcome as well, seeing as I always tend to find the ones that have a plethora of problems. I'm thinking about going with a Core 2 Quad. I ended up buying a P4 at the absolute wrongest of times, right before the release of the Core Duos. Fortunately now is the time to buy them. Processors are extremely inexpensive now. Any particular models anyone could suggest would be helpful. I've been reading a lot of reviews lately, but I don't necessarily make the wisest buys, so essentially whatever I think is a wise buy, almost always like clockwork turns out to be a bad idea.

Thanks-

Ink

 

[Skrying]

The common understanding right now I believe is that come July Intel will have massive price drops for the Core 2 Quad's, I think one is suppose to be only $266 which is incredibly cheap. I'd suggest waiting, you might also be able to see about the new Intel chipsets and what motherboards will be your best bet with those as well.

 

[Dresden]

Yeh I neglected to ask if there's anything I should keep my head up for, in terms of up and coming technology. Also, either it's just newegg having a lack of variety, or is there not really a lot out there. I only saw a few Core Quads.

 

[Albuquerque]

There are only a scant few Quads out there, so that explains your findings on NewEgg. Also, Skyring is definitely right about the price drop in July and about the $266 Core 2 Quad Q6400 (well, at least that's what Intel has told the public on more than one occasion).

Also in July are supposed to be other price cuts on the "normal" Core 2 Duos, as Intel will be rolling out some new ones with higher FSB's.

 

[AlexV]

Why not hang on until Penryn arrives?It may be hard, but it may present a two-fold advantage:you could get Penryn, which should be a tad bit better and somewhat cooler, or you could get a current gen Quad, for less.

 

[Albuquerque]

Why not hang on until Penryn arrives?It may be hard, but it may present a two-fold advantage:you could get Penryn, which should be a tad bit better and somewhat cooler, or you could get a current gen Quad, for less.

Well, there's always something better to wait for. Why not wait for the successor to Penryn? Why not wait until the ?985 chipset? Why not wait for the G120?

Penryn isn't coming until Q4-ish at the earliest, and is primarily targetted for mobile platforms first. A C2Q would be great, and is only a few weeks away at most. You'd wait almost that long just to have your current equipment shipped anyhow, so it's not a huge deal.

Not that I disagree about Penryn being a whoop-ass part, but after certain point, it really isn't worth the wait.

 

[AlexV]

I made that remark being fully aware of the perpetuum-mobile nature of waiting for something better. The catch is that I don`t think he`s really really needing that C2Q stat, now, in this second, and mobos available now will almost certainly support Penryn(most of the high-end ones anyhow). Intel also seems to be pushing the release schedule for the 1333MHz FSB parts, and has plans to discontinue the current 1066Mhz FSB ones by the end of the year, which could also impact their price positively. Whilst I certainly don`t understand the perpetual "wait for something better" mentality, nor do I encourage one, I think that when a significant release of anything is near(relatively speaking), one can wait a tad in order to ride the wave of cutting-edgeness for...umm...a few weeks, before rumors of the next best thing show up.

 

[Albuquerque]

I made that remark being fully aware of the perpetuum-mobile nature of waiting for something better. The catch is that I don`t think he`s really really needing that C2Q stat, now, in this second, and mobos available now will almost certainly support Penryn(most of the high-end ones anyhow). Intel also seems to be pushing the release schedule for the 1333MHz FSB parts, and has plans to discontinue the current 1066Mhz FSB ones by the end of the year, which could also impact their price positively. Whilst I certainly don`t understand the perpetual "wait for something better" mentality, nor do I encourage one, I think that when a significant release of anything is near(relatively speaking), one can wait a tad in order to ride the wave of cutting-edgeness for...umm...a few weeks, before rumors of the next best thing show up.

I kinda figured you were poking fun anyway, I just thought I might take the opportunity to state the obvious -- unnecessarily so I must admit

I think I'd have to agree with you though -- if Ink really doesn't need / want a processor like this month, then waiting for Penryn is a great idea for all the reasons you mentioned. I'm doing the exact same thing; my overhaul isn't happening until beginning of next year so I can get the desktop-version of Santa Rosa chipset, a 45nm Quad and about 8Gb of DDR-1333 ram

Along with a G90 or an R650 (or whatever-the-hell they'll be called)

 

[SugarCoat]

on the otherhand if you can upgrade sooner rather than later then theres no good reason not to right now. You can pickup a good Core 2 processor for as little as $200 and a P35 board thats all set to accept the next Core 2 generation processors now. Thats about as simple of a drop in upgrade as they come if the upgrade proves worth it.

That makes more sense to me then suffering for 4-5 months when you can get a huge performance increase now.

 

[Blazkowicz]

the E4400 looks nice to me.

 

[AlexV]

on the otherhand if you can upgrade sooner rather than later then theres no good reason not to right now. You can pickup a good Core 2 processor for as little as $200 and a P35 board thats all set to accept the next Core 2 generation processors now. Thats about as simple of a drop in upgrade as they come if the upgrade proves worth it.

That makes more sense to me then suffering for 4-5 months when you can get a huge performance increase now.

And drool 4 months later when Penryn runs Alan Wake mucho mas faster or whatever. In the end, it really depends on the type of buyer he is/what he expects, no?If it`s worth anything, this summer seems to be a tad bit droughty in terms of drool-worthy titles...whilst the winter seems to be packed. Take the pain, in order to poke fun at others when you stroll through Crysis).

I guess my logic is this:time your major(ish) upgrades so they fall in-line with something significant, like the release of the first wave of DX10 titles/properly multithreaded/whatever buzzword is sexy. No matter when you upgrade or how high up the food-chain you`re going, in a few months it`ll become second-best(at best ) to something else, but at least if you upgrade in the middle of something big you can play with the cool kids giving out big performance numbers, whilst if you upgrade in a calm period,all you can do is harp about how your experience with older stuff has improved. As I said before, it all comes down to his personal preference, choice.

 

[BRiT]

Why not buy a P35 board with the Q6600 Quad Core CPU for $266 on July 23nd? Then if need be upgrade the CPU when Penryn comes out? Is there something against doing two upgrades within 5 months?

I guess my logic is live in the now -- carpe diem.

 

[AlexV]

Which is why I said it`s up to him, and the type of customer he is. Sometimes, splitting hairs into subdivisions that are too small to see is useless. If he`s up for upgrading every 5 months, cool. If he`s aiming for longer upgrade cycles, for whatever reasons, then he can try holding on a tad bit more until Penryn comes out, in order to either get what he`d get today/in july at a lower price, or to get Penryn if he sees fit to do that. What is so complex in this particular reasoning, as to make it completely far-fetched and unfeasible?I`m really trying to understand this...

 

[BRiT]

Nothing is complex. What you wrote came off as if it was not possible to build during the July price-cuts and then upgrade later if need be. It sort of read as an exclusive either-or situation and not a both situation.

Here is what is far-fetched and unreasonable: Alan Wake won't run smoothly on a current Q6600 cpu but will run smoothly on the Dual-Core Penryns. If that's the case, then 100% of the gaming market users need to upgrade.

 

[Skrying]

I wasn't under the assumption Penryn was even that large of a upgrade to Conroe, the posts in this thread would have me thinking its massive though...

 

[AlexV]

It`s not.From what has been shown, it`s something along the lines of 10% at same clocks, under normal circumstances. With SSE4 it increases. It`ll be cooler than current Core2s, but with the increased clocks the TDP will remain the same it is now.

And if that Alan Wake comment is taken so seriously...wow, I guess tongue in cheek stuff doesn't translate allk too well on the internetz

 

[Skrying]

It`s not.From what has been shown, it`s something along the lines of 10% at same clocks, under normal circumstances. With SSE4 it increases. It`ll be cooler than current Core2s, but with the increased clocks the TDP will remain the same it is now.

And if that Alan Wake comment is taken so seriously...wow, I guess tongue in cheek stuff doesn't translate allk too well on the internetz

It wasn't that, its just I never even considered Penryn because the increase was not worth the wait nor the early introduction price it'll have. Frankly I think the Core 2 Quad and new motherboard come July is the only "real" answer for a person looking to upgrade now. The Penryn different is so small its not going to be worth the wait and cost.

 

[BRiT]

Should have used more / a smilie.

 

[swaaye]

I've rather given up on the "omg wait the next best thing (TM) is right around the corner (4 months, etc)." I mean, if you had bought a A64 X2 instead of Conroe a year ago, would it really matter now? Nah. The speed difference isn't THAT much. Unless you only encode video, in which case you shoulda done your homework a bit better.

Just think of what you want to do with the comp and buy what's around now and fairly cheap. Never buy the high-end because "high-end" is at the peak of the depreciation slope and you definitely don't get a lot of value/$ that way. I don't mind overclocking like a madman, so I usually search forums to figure out what is the current overclocking fav (i.e. best value for me) and go with that. You can't really lose that way, IMO.

And in the PC world, games are all about scaling and don't really take advantage of the latest stuff anyway. So it all normalizes out rather nicely into "you can't really go wrong" unless you buy a Netburst CPU, say.

What do I run? Right now, a E4300 @ 3.1 GHz. That's gonna last a while, methinks. Sweet 72% overclock. Lot of time expended in tweaking efforts, though. But, hey, I get most of my computing jollys from that anyway. I would still be running an Opteron 165 if I hadn't crushed the core in an evil overclocking experiment.

 

[SugarCoat]

And drool 4 months later when Penryn runs Alan Wake mucho mas faster or whatever. In the end, it really depends on the type of buyer he is/what he expects, no?If it`s worth anything, this summer seems to be a tad bit droughty in terms of drool-worthy titles...whilst the winter seems to be packed. Take the pain, in order to poke fun at others when you stroll through Crysis).

As i said, if the upgrade proved worth it nothing would stop someone from dropping a future Core 2 revision processor into the P35 board in the later months. By the time we see Alan Wake Nehalem should be released so that point is moot. Bioshock and Quake Wars are a couple games im personally waiting on and have speculative Q2/Q3 release dates, i'd call either big titles.

I guess my logic is this:time your major(ish) upgrades so they fall in-line with something significant, like the release of the first wave of DX10 titles/properly multithreaded/whatever buzzword is sexy. No matter when you upgrade or how high up the food-chain you`re going, in a few months it`ll become second-best(at best ) to something else, but at least if you upgrade in the middle of something big you can play with the cool kids giving out big performance numbers, whilst if you upgrade in a calm period,all you can do is harp about how your experience with older stuff has improved. As I said before, it all comes down to his personal preference, choice.

I actually kinda disagree with upgrading right when something new comes out. I regretted it twice recently with major platform changes. When Intel switched over to LGA775 and PCI Express and when nVidia released Nforce 4. I found myself in the position of a hardware beta tester looking for updates constantly to increase performance/solve issues. Your selection of choices is usually limited as well, plus you dont usually save anything as no ones offering discounts/deals on newly released products.

For example right now is a good time to invest into Core 2 based systems because theres many good deals to be had, and a lot more to choose from, as opposed to the launch month. As much as the mentality of having something considered old sucks, it is indeed the logical move to let a new release weather a bit.