QOTD: What Determines Your Upgrade Cycle?

[yamagiru]

Current/future games and their requirments

Current/future technology and what it has to offer over what I have at the time; better quality, faster response, quicker loading, smoother graphices, etc.

Budget/necessity; does it fall within my financial availability, is it a necessary upgrade, prioritization of what will give the best benefit for the best value.

Always buy on a 'tock' cycle for Intels, let them perfect their current offerings then buy before the next 'tick', I don't want to test their next CPU in case something goes terribly wrong.

 

[thomaseron]

When the games lag, it is time, if I've got the money. Just bought AMD PII 955 BE, 4GB ddr3-1600. Only waiting for radeon 5870 and I'll be set for another 3-4 years. 🙂

 

[Guest]

When I get 100% increase in cpu performance memory and hard drives at a price that is 50% of a brand bought p/c I look for the best prices from multiple online vendors wait for the next generation processor to emerge and buy the last generation top end processor at the best prices in a stand alone or combo deal. Note : buy top end processor with core lock and unlock fourth core and run tests and smile when you have a winner.

 

[plm999]

I usually upgrade when my performance needs dictate that it's time.

Right now I playing games on my PS3, but when I upgrade I'll probably include the required hardware to make my desktop playable again.

I've recently converted my music library to a digital archive, and I need different derivative compressed formats for different applications (e.g. lower bit rates in certain formats for portable, but higher bit rates and different formats for listening in different rooms of the house, depending on the media client. My old (current) system is wheezing big time, (so it's time).

 

[Gin Fushicho]

I wait till the "best of the best" has been tested out , and in a year or up to 3 years time I buy a whole new system thats extremely compatible with all my parts.

 

[horatio b]

If I can't run Crysis, it's time to upgrade.

 

[Guest]

I was just wondering about this! I actually am about to upgrade OS, RAM, GPU and Hard Drive. It's been 3 years since I built my rig, and I generally look for when the price of something that is way better than a component that I have has dropped to a great value price. I/E. Today, the gtx 260 is a really nice price at around $150. So its a buy for me to replace my 7800. Same with HD, i paid about 75$ for a 250gb 8mb cache 3 years ago, i can get the 1TB for $75 with 32mb cache, lower noise etc. so I'm making the grade on that one as well. Mobo and CPU can wait, they are less important. But when top LGA775 cpu drops another 100$ ill buy it and plug it in there. After that's maxed out.... lookin for new system, so new system every 6 yrs we'll say. I aint rich.

 

[commisar]

Money and timing really. I guess i plan on upgrading about once every 2 years but buy the time i have researched everything avalible and upcoming releases it takes anything from 2.5-3 years, just to be thurough, i have to get value for my money. That and i hate upgrading single parts, i need to start from scratch, the only things left of my last computer are the g15 keyboard (dont like the newer ones) and my razer mouse (havent found better).

 

[caskachan]

Whenever milestone games /technologies require me to upgrade

i have a core2duo 6mb cache , 9600gt 8gb i play everything fairly well
before i had a 5200+X2 4gb 8600gt
before i had a 4800+ 2gb 7600gt
then i had a 2500+ 1gb 9600pro
then duron 1200 512mb voodoo

so yeah it takes a while for me XD

 

[tester24]

I think mine depends on a mix of things mostly between the last time I upgraded, have any new significant technologies come out that are worth buying, and what kind of machine will i need to play not only the latest games with the highest settings but games in the future.

Unfortunately nowadays I cannot afford to just buy a huge chunk of equipment and be done with it. But it's not all bad because as long as you have an idea on where you want to go with your system, buying piece by piece is actually better namely because parts always get cheaper, and newer faster stuff comes out drops the price them even more.

 

[werfu]

I use a Thinkpad T61p with T7500 as a working machine (and for some minimal gaming with the FX570m), but I keep my old Opteron 180 system kicking for gaming. It has 3gig of OCZ Platinum EL DDR400 and a EVGA 9800GTX+ SC (overkill for this system I know).

I want from a P3 500Mhz to a Celeron 1Ghz, to an Athlon 64 2800+ on socket 754, then my Opteron 180 on 939 (it was on the end of the 939 socket, AM2 was near launch).

I'll be upgrading soon, hesitating on going on the cheap and buying a Phenom X2 550 to unlock the four cores and beat the shit out of it, or go with a Core i7 920 and twist my fingers that intel dont fµck me in the ass latter on by releasing CPU not compatible with my new mobo.

 

[830hobbes]

My three-year-old amd x2 3800+ system is still a snappy computer. I don't game much, so I really just upgrade when my computer starts annoying me because it's slow with new applications. I'll probably upgrade again soon, as I'll be doing molecule modelling at my new job and I'd like to be able to do some work at home.

 

[830hobbes]

[citation][nom]systembuilderdude123[/nom]I was just wondering about this! I actually am about to upgrade OS, RAM, GPU and Hard Drive. It's been 3 years since I built my rig, and I generally look for when the price of something that is way better than a component that I have has dropped to a great value price. I/E. Today, the gtx 260 is a really nice price at around $150. So its a buy for me to replace my 7800. Same with HD, i paid about 75$ for a 250gb 8mb cache 3 years ago, i can get the 1TB for $75 with 32mb cache, lower noise etc. so I'm making the grade on that one as well. Mobo and CPU can wait, they are less important. But when top LGA775 cpu drops another 100$ ill buy it and plug it in there. After that's maxed out.... lookin for new system, so new system every 6 yrs we'll say. I aint rich.[/citation]

Wait for Windows 7 on the OS upgrade. I'm using the RC right now and it's really nice. I've never used Vista but the things I've heard place it well below my experience with Windows 7.

 

[dark_lord69]

Frame Rate Benchmarks.

 

[freak77power]

If I have money then i upgrade whenever i can't play games with no less the highest details with AA enabled.

 

[marraco]

My win7 RC includes DirextX 11. There is no way I gonna buy a new GPU without DX11

 

[spinaltap775]

Once the computer with fairly decent RAM freezes up opening only the internet, and once manufacturers no longer manufacture a piece of hardware that you have.

 

[athan902]

My first PC was a pentium 4 based and I bought that way back 2002. I upgraded my first mobo because it was broken and it's just utilizing 256 MB SDR 133MHz and AGP 4x. When I purchased a new mobo, I also included 256 MB DDR-400 RAM and upgrade my GPU from Riva TNT2 to Geforce FX 5200 since it supports AGP 8x. Then I added another 256 MB RAM for a total of 512 MB RAM and a DVD-RW Drive/

On May 2008, after selling my pentium 4 in whole package and gaining adequate cash, I assembled my first high-performance PC, a quad-core based rig, then I started to burn money for this. I'll be using this PC for about 3-4 years. Then I'll assemble a brand new rig.

In short, I only assemble brand new rig when a hardware is really "revolutionary". just like from my single core shifting into a quad-core.

I just perform some upgrades, not replacing some hardware time after time unless it gets broken.

 

[liquidsnake718]

An average to 2 - 3 years. My last PC was made in 2006. I just built one last summer(7/08) and have upgraded it through time as it has been basically maximized. I could buy a new processor and graphics card but they both still serve my gaming and multimedia purposes' well.

I have a c2d e7400, intel dg35ec motherboard, evga9800gtx+, gigabyte cpu cooler, 4gb ddr2800, ocz ram cooler, 2 wd 500gb black drives. Vista 32bit.

I think this is still good enough to take on crazy games at even the most difficult settings. I even tried Crysis WH out last night with enthuiast 8xAA, and the game looked great and was going at around the 18-20fps walking around but then the game started to stutter as soon as I was fired at. Haha, well most pcs would basically freeze under the circumstances. As for other games, this PC is still a monster and can basically maximize the settings of basically any other game.

So aside from possibly upgrading to a gtx285, Im just going to wait for a whole generation of PC parts and software to come out, gen 2 i7, SSD 2.0, USB 3.0, 35nm Geforce 300's, SATAII, Blue Ray drive, and DX11, Windows 7 service w pack1, built in wireless n, and maybe even PCIe 3.0.

This build would be the true successor(s) of the current generation of PC parts. What do you think? It will cost a whole lot though.

 

[Guest]

Its called MONEY

 

[FallenSniper]

I personally try to do Graphics Card every 1-2 years and then everything else every 3 years

 

[airwolfflies]

One of the major factors that detemined for me that it was time for an upgrade was the release of COD 4 Modern Warfare. At the time it was released I had a Gateway Multimedia System with a Pentium 4, 1 GB of RAM, and a wimpy 256MB video card and a decent 320 GB SATA HD. The game played very sloowww on my old Gateway. My son had built an Alienware case with an MSI K-8 MB and an ATI Radeon 4870 1 GB RAM video card and the AMD 3200 cpu.

Seeing his system flawlessly play this game instead of the jerky stuttering of my old PC convinced me to start with a whole new system. The system I chose was the Asus M4N78 Pro MB with PCI Express, an AMD Athalon dual core X2 250 cpu at 3.0GHZ, a Western Digital SATA 1 TB HD, the Nvidea GE Force 9500GT 1 GB RAm video card and the Linksys Wireless G PCI card for my internet. And I decided to dispense with the traditional method of using air to cool my cpu and went with a Musscool Liquid CPU Cooling System.

The results are phenomenal! First of all, there isn't any game out on the market my new built PC cannot handle with the 1Gb video card and the dual core AMD Athalon x2 250 cpu, and the Musscool system even with overclocking has never got over 30c or 77F.
Then my old 17 Inch Logitech LCD seemed kinda wimpy too and I went out and bought myself an Element 32 Inch monitor to play all my new games on, and now my new system has got my son jealous of the system I built. So now after giving him the same Asus MB I have for Christmas, his birthday in March coming up I will set him up with the same Musscool cpu cooler I have too.