To wait or not to wait?? help????

**Ncc Speed** · #1 12th Feb 2008, 20:30

hey,
i am going to be building my first system once my taxes come back. for rite now im limited with money. here is my delima and question. do you guys think it would be ok to build my system to a decent standard(once its done the way i want it will be very nice) for rite now at a much cheaper price and just upgrade parts later as i get money. that way i can have a new computer that is updated and still nice untill i upgrade it further later on. i know this can seem to be a slight waste of money but not much and i can use these parts elsewhere or sell them. i just want opinions on this subject. i am goin to not cut back on the case i want and like my motherboard will be the one i want cuz that would b stupid to change out. but cutting back for now on memory, optical drive, hd, smaller cpu??? any help would be great. thnx josh

**Eltocliousus** · #2 12th Feb 2008, 22:37

I think now is a good time, crysis is the only game that will test a rig and talk of a better graphic game hasn't even been mentioned.

Starting with a good computer and upgrading different parts as new things come out is my favourate idea, you learn more about computers and hardware.

So personally i think you should build one now, don't go get the best of the best unless your loaded, the best of the best hardware won't be in lead for long.

**Carbon** · #3 13th Feb 2008, 00:42

Absolutely not. You should have a good amount of money before you start, we are right between generations of hardware and the only useful thing to do is buy the medium to high end stuff. It will be a waste to buy a 8200 for example, or a 8600GTS. If you can't afford the basic setup in my guide, you should wait.

Quote:

crysis is the only game that will test a rig

Crysis is the only game that tests its own shoddy coding. The only thing that will adequately test a rig is 3DMark and playing games like CoD4.

**Ncc Speed** · #4 13th Feb 2008, 05:29

ok,
so if i want to go now tho go with both sides here and say like get the good mobo,vid card,cpu so to say and just with ram ill just get 2 strips instead of 4, one optical instead of the 2, one hd instead of 2. wouldnt doing something like this be ok. i could get computer sooner and cheaper. still have my solid upgradable base. just top off those few things as i go?

**Carbon** · #5 13th Feb 2008, 06:24

Yeah. Grab a 8400, good motherboard and a 8800GT and then you can do what you said. It's just so easy to fall into the trap of "hey I can get this motherboard" and then two months later you have to rip everything out which is not fun.

I like the DDRR2/DDR3 hybrid mobo for just this reason.

**Ncc Speed** · #6 13th Feb 2008, 08:40

i was looking at this mobo. this is the one you suggested to me earlier.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128048

**Carbon** · #7 13th Feb 2008, 17:06

Yeah, see now you can grab that and stick some 1066 or 800 DDR2 in it and DDR3 later. The DDR3 speeds aren't as high as dedicated boards, but that's out of the question right now ($500 for 2GB lolwut?).

**alex** · #8 13th Feb 2008, 17:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carbon

Absolutely not. You should have a good amount of money before you start, we are right between generations of hardware and the only useful thing to do is buy the medium to high end stuff. It will be a waste to buy a 8200 for example, or a 8600GTS. If you can't afford the basic setup in my guide, you should wait.

Crysis is the only game that tests its own shoddy coding. The only thing that will adequately test a rig is 3DMark and playing games like CoD4.

I disagree.

It's dependent on the usage you're wanting the build for and the apps you're running and, if gaming, the resolution you're gaming at plays a very big part in the equation.

The E8200 is quite simply not a waste to purchase. A dual core, conroe-based, cpu running at 2.66ghz stock supporting the bandwidth that a 1333mhz fsb provides is not to be sniffed at. I'd quote you'll only see bottlenecking in gaming at 1920x1200 or above. E6700? E6750? Superb cpu's. And this one's better.

Especially if you team it up with some 800mhz, or preferably, some 1066mhz ram.

It's easy enough to quote a 8800GT, and I agree on a bang-for-buck basis, as the GT can game across all the usual resolutions. It'll even give you a run for your money at 1920x1200 (24-27" monitors) but only on the factory oc'd ones or if you've oc'd a vanilla GT yourself. But this card simply isn't the be all and end all of performance. But it is the best you'll get for the money.

The new GTS is too far overpriced in comparison for the performance boost, as is the GTX (The GTX and Ultra are silly purchases now).

Motherboards that support both DDR2 and DDR3 are few and far between. I believe only Asus manufacture a board (I believe its the P5KC, might be wrong on the model though) that has slots that support both dimm types. This is better as it means there's also separate channels for each type of ram
which in turn means no latency hit due to the dimm slots having to be switched by the bios (In the case of MSI).

Crysis does not have shoddy coding. It's coded in DX9 with support for DX10 attributes such as shader 4 and shader 4 is very intensive on the gpu. Also, the physics involved in the destructable environments take up a lot of cpu and gpu runtime.

You are correct on one point though, we are in a transitional period between certain elements of hardware. Namely ram. But DDR3 is becoming more mainstream, latencies are coming down all the time (not a big thing anyway with the wolfdale architecture) the only sticking point is the price. But DDR2 is supported (albeit not officially) at speeds of upto 1066mhz across a lot of chipsets and boards by various manufacturers. Natively. So theres no messing with timings and whatnot in the bios. 680i supports it, P35 supports it. Heck, even certain P965 chipset boards supported 1066mhz ram.

We're not however in a transitional period with cpu's. A typical cpu architecture is released every 5 years in the industry. Wolfdale (based on conroe) has just been released for retail sale and AMD's new architecture in the Phenom is also out. You will see revisions of these in the future but not for a year or so.

It's never a good or bad time to buy to be frank, unless there's a major update in the industry (DX9 to DX10 for instance) as that's when new motherboard chipsets are released and that's the key to futureproofing; the motherboard. Everything else, on that point, is secondary.

**Gazmondo** · #9 13th Feb 2008, 18:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex

I believe only Asus manufacture a board (I believe its the P5KC, might be wrong on the model though) that has slots that support both dimm types.

It is the Asus P5KC motherboard.

**Ncc Speed** · #10 13th Feb 2008, 21:21

ok thanks for all the great input guys. i get my tax return tomorrow morning. ill prob do some looking around and i will be sure to make a new post about the build. i will include all the parts im looking at with links to see them. and i will prob post this within the next day or 2. so please if you guys see it check it out and give me some input. and based on the input ill either change some parts or just start ordering. yay lol just hope i can be very careful and not break anything on the first build lol.