Advice needed: Other options?

[mfmavor]

Hi,

Not after an entire build from the ground up, but thought I'd ask the community to perhaps scrutinize some of my choices here.

I am building a new PC. Specifically for gaming. However! I already have a sufficient PSU, case, optical drive and hard disk drive. You can assume that I don't wish to dabble in SSDs for now, although if anyone can convince me that they are worth it for gaming, I'll change my mind 😀


So as of right now my motherboard, graphics card, processor and RAM look like this:

MSI K9A2VM AMD 780V (Socket AM2+) (Micro-ATX) Motherboard
nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB Graphics Card
AMD Phenom 9600 Quad-Core Processor @ 2.3Ghz
8GB (4x2GB) 800MHz DDR2 RAM (not sure on brand)


And so far I'm contemplating these parts to replace them:

MSI 990XA-GD55 AMD 990X (Socket AM3+) (ATX) Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130620&Tpk=MSI%20990XA-GD55

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6950 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102949

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 975 Black Edition Processor @ 3.6GHz

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103923&Tpk=975%20Black%20Edition%20Processor

8GB (2x4GB) 1866MHz Corsair Vengeance Black DDR3 RAM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233184&Tpk=1866MHz%20Corsair%20Vengeance


I reckon thats about £450 worth, apologies for not dealing in dollars, but at current exchange that's $700.

So from there a few questions spring up. Mainly, is it worth waiting 3-4 weeks due to the Bulldozer CPU announcements, are we expecting a price drop of previous AMD processors due to that?

But other than that, is there any other options I should look at in those component areas? I'm open to SLI/Crossfire in the future, but a single solid card is what I'm after at the moment. Minimally experienced in overclocking, so could look at that more in-depth, but not really wishing to make major component decisions solely based on it.


Thanks in advance, any further questions please ask.


EDIT: Added Newegg links.

 

[etk]

Closer to 1 week, so yea i'd say worth waiting. (October 12-13) Consensus seems to be top end bulldozer will be ~2500k performance, but with higher power use.

 

[mfmavor]

Closer to 1 week, so yea i'd say worth waiting. (October 12-13) Consensus seems to be top end bulldozer will be ~2500k performance, but with higher power use.

Yeah I'd probably go with the processors that would effectively become "previous generation" (if you want to put it that way) even after the Bulldozer release unless they give a good price on the Bulldozer processors themselves. We know Phenom II processors perform well and will do pretty much anything I need them to do, would just be interesting to see if we get a drop in price which is what I'm hoping for.

It is all just conjecture at this point thought, so I guess the smartest option is to wait and see.

 

[kajabla]

A 955 would fine, and would overclock almost as well.

 

[suteck]

Not only that but I doubt you will see a price drop after bulldozer comes out, unless you're talking about waiting a year or so. As everyone says, the current processors still run great and will do most if not all of what the majority of people want/need so the demand will remain fairly constant as will the price. (of course that's my opinion)