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Buy new PC now or wait?
CrazedBeaver
Member Posts: 73
in Hardware
I hear the pros talking about Sandy Bridge coming out in January. But when can I expect Dell be selling them? (No, I don't have the time or patience to build my own.) I'd like to get a new PC in Jan-Feb. March-April at the latest.
Also, what are the odds that the there will be all sorts of problems with the new architecture at release? I don't want a new PC plagued with problems. I don't need top-of-the-line, but it needs to be fairly solid for 2-3 years. In your opinion, should I stop waiting for 'the new stuff', or am I going to be glad I waiting for it?
Comments
I don't know when Dell will sell them. But I wouldn't buy a gaming computer from Dell, anyway. If a company won't tell you what power supply and motherboard they use, it's because they don't want you to know--because they're not very good. Furthermore, if you can't replace parts yourself, that would rule out the option of getting a Socket AM3 platform now and upgrading it to Bulldozer later, so I'd definitely recommend waiting.
A new processor architecture should work just fine at release. At worst, there's a remote chance that you'll run into some BIOS glitch. It's not like video cards, which need tremendously complicated drivers in order to work properly.
What's your budget on a new computer?
The problem with waiting for new stuff, is that you never stop waiting:).
There will always be something right around the corner coming along.
So basicly, if you are set on getting a computer from dell, i would wait just a bit till around christmas time. They usually have some sales at that time, (just a warning, their delivery times are bad also around that time with some long waits too) but you can get a decent computer there.
But do not expect top notch parts to be used. I have owned 2 dells and other than a hard drive going out on the first never had any other issues.
Going that route will cost you more than just about any other way to get a system, and i always say look around your community, find a local shop that has been in business for a while and ask them if they will put together a system for you, if you bring them all the parts. Most will do this for 1-200 dolars giving you a much better system for less cash in the end.
This will get you a system that has the exact parts you want/need, and save you (in some cases) several hundred dollars for a minumal time investment on your part.
I'd never buy Dell.
I would wait til January and then buy current gen stuff. Reason being it will be cheaper for something that just a little less advanced than the new stuff and you will be happy with it for AT LEAST 2 years.
Hardware changes so fast that its not even worth it to buy the latest and greatest. I've played that game and its just a waste of money in the longrun because you could use the money you saved to buy that same machine a year later.
Do you know for certain?
If your current computer can play Age of Conan good then you do not need a new computer right away because unless there is some suprise we don't know about I doubt any mmo in the next 5 years will be breaking the graphics barriers anytime soon. I run an I5 processor and I can run anything I want with no issues.
how many, amd top black proc you geyt for a sandy , 3 4 ?buy 2 x6 instead or better yet a ssd ,onintel is only good for ssd raid (amd doesnt)aside from that amd iati is the clear choice ,if you can wait fusion will come out soon also will prob be cost effectibve aslso
Can anyone translate this? I looks like there might be decent info in this "paragraph" but i can't quite decipher out all the gibberish to get to the good stuff.
To the contrary, we know when major new stuff is coming. Major new processor architectures don't come along every day. Sandy Bridge and Bobcat launch in January, Bulldozer in the second quarter of 2011, and that will be it for major new processor architectures until Haswell around the start of 2013, unless you want to count Via's new Nano. Bobcat isn't relevant for gaming, either; it's going to be the thing to get for cheap laptops. And it's likely that Haswell won't be as important of a jump as Sandy Bridge, Bobcat, or Bulldozer, either.
We also know when new die shrinks are coming, which is the other way you get big improvements. AMD goes to 32 nm HKMG SOI with Bulldozer and Llano in the second quarter of 2011. Sandy Bridge is 32 nm like Arrandale and Gulftown, but neither of those are really suitable for gaming (in the case of Gulftown, because it is too expensive), so Sandy Bridge will effectively be a die shrink from Lynnfield and Bloomfield. Bobcat will be 40 nm, but that's a brand new line. After that, the next die shrinks are Ivy Bridge (a shrink of Sandy Bridge) to 22 nm around the start of 2012, Krishna (a shrink of Bobcat) to 28 nm in 2012, and then AMD presumably will launch some successor to Bulldozer on 22 nm in 2013.
I don't think that future processor die shrinks will be that important for desktops, or at least not nearly as important as they've been in the past. We're pretty much maxed out on clock speed. The next round will get us enough cores that more won't help much there, either. Power reductions will be great for laptops, but not so important for desktops. If they can use more transistors to improve single-threaded performance, then great, but I don't think that's easy to do.
Video cards will continue to scale up and up at least with the next couple of die shrinks, but video cards are easier to replace, as they don't also require replacing the motherboard and possibly the memory.
Budget is tentatively ~$1200. I only go with Dell out of habit... But I've read these guys are good;
Cyberpower
Ibuypower
Vigor Gaming
Puget
Avadirect
Looks like I'd get more for my money with any of them over Dell. I wonder if these companies would be offering Sandy Bridge in late January, and if it would be in line with current tech prices...? Or is there going to be a luxery tax since it's new tech?
My PC (Core2 Duo E8400 3ghz, 9800gt 1gig, 3g RAM) still does surprisingly well in most areas (Bad Company 2 runs just fine), except for what I really want it to do: Run 4 instances of Lineage 2 while watching a movie on NetFlix or running iTunes without the game becoming a slideshow after a couple hours of play.
Also looking forward to Terra release, Lineage update coming in feb 2011, and Lineage (Unreal 2 engine) graphics update late next year. As we now enter the cold of winter, it'd be nice to have a new PC while stuck inside for some serious game time.
With your last post it looks as though all you need is a quad core CPU and may be a more powerful video card.
Currently, any Intel four core running at 3GHz+ [Core 2 or newer] and an HD 6870 [or GTX 470] looks like all you need, as long as your power supply is of good quality.
Why you want to run four instances of Lineage 2 is beyond me, may be you should simply build a six core AMD rig.
Sandy Bridge is a die shrink but it will come with baggage, a GPU, which moderate to power gamers will never use, the common North Bridge will be removed, so overclocking is out except for the K series, and then system memory bandwidth may suffer with moderate to high overclocks. However, with video in the CPU you should still be able to play Microsoft Solitaire with good frame rates ...
The biggest issue I see building or purchasing Sandy Bridge is the motherboard architecture will be immature, where as current motherboards are mature, in other words, there may be issues with newer motherboards that you will not experience with mature ones.
EDIT: Changed 6800 to 6870
Intel Core i7 7700K, MB is Gigabyte Z270X-UD5
SSD x2, 4TB WD Black HHD, 32GB RAM, MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE video card
If you want to run four instances of Lineage at once, then you may well be running out of memory. For that, you might want to get 8 GB of system memory just to be safe. If you go that route, make sure you get it as a two modules of 4 GB each, not four modules of 2 GB each.
I've never heard of Vigor Gaming, but any of the other cites you list will probably have Sandy Bridge available for sale the day it launches. Cyber Power PC and iBuyPower specialize in cheap gaming systems. They'll have some cheap junk parts in their base builds so that they can advertise low base prices, but let you pay more for something better.
AVA Direct charges a little bit more, but their selling point is that you can get nearly whatever you want, and AVA Direct will build it for you. For example, AVA Direct offers 182 choices for hard drives/SSDs right now. This is in contrast to many sites that only offer a few choices, and sometimes don't even tell you exactly what they use.
Puget Systems is more of a boutique vendor specializing in quiet computers. They charge a bigger markup than the others, though still considerably less than some of the really high priced boutique vendors. One advantage of buying from them is that they don't even offer cheap junk parts of the sort that no one should buy, so if you buy from them, you're guaranteed to get something nice. Not necessarily fast (as they do offer slow parts), but reliable and fairly quiet for its level of performance.
I'd expect Cyber Power PC, iBuyPower, and AVA Direct to have Sandy Bridge systems available for sale the day that Intel launches them. I'm not sure about Puget Systems, but if they don't have them for sale on launch day, they probably will shortly thereafter. None of them are going to take six months to get around to selling what people ought to be, the way that Apple will.
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Yeah, Sandy Bridge has a GPU on die. And yes, for a gaming system, that's wasted silicon. But that's Intel's problem. Do people say, don't buy a Radeon HD 5870 or GeForce GTX 580 because they use some die space for double precision computations that are useless for gaming? Sandy Bridge is still going to be better than anything on the market today. And yes, I'd rather have a Core i7 2600K than a Core i7 980X Gulftown, because of the markedly better single-thread performance.
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With a $1200 budget, I'd definitely wait until January. I'd probably get a Core i5 2500 on that budget, though you might be able to squeeze in a Core i7 2600. You probably shouldn't look at anything slower than a Radeon HD 6870 for the video card, or perhaps a GeForce GTX 560, which might launch by then and should perform comparably to a Radeon HD 6870. You might be able to fit a Radeon HD 6950 or 6970 into the budget, as those will launch by then. A GeForce GTX 570 might launch by January as well. The GeForce GTX 580 is already out, but there's a decent chance that Nvidia will be force to slash prices on it in response to AMD's Cayman cards.
Many thanks for the informed opinions. Looks like SB is going to release without a price premium, so I'll tough it out until then and go for i7-2600 and the best video card I can afford when that time arrives.