Upgrading your rig? Think twice.

Fangrim

Fangrim
Patrick_68000 said:
The problem is that the latest technologies are always very expensive
Click to expand...

Indeed!

If you can't afford, or you don't want to spend a ridicolous amount of money for the latest stuff, the "obsolete tech" will plummet in price as soon as the new CPUs and RAM hits the market.

I dunno if I'm going to upgrade - I hope my laptop (ASUS G75VW) can run the game satisfactory, if not, I'll wait until the last possible moment.
 

Kerrash

Kerrash
Conzar said:
... We got a few speed bumps and the socket was unceremoniously dumped for the new 1156 (1155 maybe - can't remember now).

For the record, the 920 is still a monster cpu, triple channel ram, and nothing phases it. The motherboard is also an overclocker's dream (buttons on board and a a damn drop-down box in bios for selecting a chip to equal the performance of). I have no problem meeting the requirements of most games, but my upgrade path will no longer feature this motherboard, chip or ram.
Click to expand...

Welcome to the forums commander! :D

I know the feeling, I am still rocking a first gen i7 920 too. Great chip tho, has served me well for years and I still have head room to overclock it.

Still, it is all about the GPU these days anyway ;)
 

Conzar

Conzar
Long time (though part-time until recently) lurker! :D

I have an approximate rule to spend an average of £100-£150 per year on upgrades. Obviously the mid-range graphics card needs a bit more spending on it, so it gets put on hold for a bit, and when the big upgrade (mobo/chip/ram) comes around, the graphics card is not getting a look in (or budget one if necessary). I got a Geforce 560Ti 2GB quite a while ago, so a bit overdue an upgrade, but no complaints from any of my current games, so no point in spending.

I was considering a new joystick, but this crappy Saitek worked after a little regedit, so I'll see how that goes before shelling out.
 

Pyros

P
Echo Seven said:
Just some general advice - In light of recent developments, it may be best to just wait. Even today's top-of-the-line rigs are only going to be a mid-range system in 12 months.

Wait until the end of next year if your system will generally support ED well enough. In 2014 we're going to see the release of DDR4 RAM, the first Intel 8-core CPU (Haswell-E) a new motherboard chipset (X-99) and next-gen video cards from both AMD and Nvidia that will eat todays cards for breakfast.

It is currently the worst time to start building a rig, with all these changes coming up.
Click to expand...

A really top of the line system will not be a mid range system within a year, at least if things keep on going as they have in the past 4 years or so.

Prediction: DDR4 and Haswell-E will be irrelevant for gamers during 2014 (Haswell-E permanently so...).

Next gen videocards will certainly be faster, but probably be here only in a year.

But of course that a system in a year will be better for the same price, or have the same performance at a lower price point. And new tech/top of the line always has a poor value for money relation :p

Edit: Actually I think now is a pretty good timing to upgrade, if you purchase well...
 
Last edited:

atome

A
Echo Seven said:
Just some general advice - In light of recent developments, it may be best to just wait. Even today's top-of-the-line rigs are only going to be a mid-range system in 12 months.

Wait until the end of next year if your system will generally support ED well enough. In 2014 we're going to see the release of DDR4 RAM, the first Intel 8-core CPU (Haswell-E) a new motherboard chipset (X-99) and next-gen video cards from both AMD and Nvidia that will eat todays cards for breakfast.

It is currently the worst time to start building a rig, with all these changes coming up.
Click to expand...

Thanks Echo, sound advice!
 

Zieman

Zieman
Couldn't wait, Alpha test looming just behind the horizon and I doubt my old rig could have handled even the retail version, no hope for Alpha.
 

Memnoch

M
Pyros said:
Prediction: DDR4 and Haswell-E will be irrelevant for gamers during 2014 (Haswell-E permanently so...).
Click to expand...
I think one problem likely to persist is the stream of console ports that we will be getting over the coming years. Admittedly things won't be quite as bad as they used to be given the huge gulf in performance between a 7 year old console and a modern gaming PC. The new consoles seem quite powerful, and as I watch a play through of Dead Rising 3, you would be forgiven for thinking this was a native PC game.
 

Echo Seven

Echo Seven
Even if someone does not want to jump on the 2011pin or the x99 new motherboard / techno journey next year, another way to see it is that the release of the new boards and chipsets will result in reductions on pricing, with all the usual caveats which have already been said in the thread. But you could see such drops in decent 1150pin boards and the excellent Intel i5 4670K, which could see you put together a little monster for very little.

Some more free advice is to use the http://pcpartpicker.com/ website to assemble the PC, then go to the reddit buildapc thread (http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/), posting the link to your pc in the previous website and ask the experts. You won't get better advice. ;)
 
Last edited:

exioce

exioce
It's a shame AMD isn't competitive with Intel at the high end because it means Intel don't really drop prices too much whenever a new chip comes out. As for me, I'll be waiting about two weeks before ED releases to upgrade, and hoping very much I don't have to upgrade at all. I'm quite happy with my dual core E5400, 4gb RAM, and 8800GTS. I could run Mass Effect 3 so I should be able to run ED too.
 

Echo Seven

Echo Seven
I personally find the low performance of AMD infuriating. There is no excuse for it given the amazing work they do on GPU's. They really have to pull it together.

Maybe AMD will share Mantle, and we will see Nvidia's released with Mantle technology.. That would be incredible for multi-displays for games like SC. It would be nice if ED hopped on board with Mantle Technology too..
 

nats

Banned
nats
If you are upgrading for a particular game it makes sense to upgrade your computer after the game comes out. Otherwise it doesnt matter when you upgrade just that you get the best you can afford. Oh and never buy the cheapest spec or the highest spec of anything.
 

rab

R
exioce said:
It's a shame AMD isn't competitive with Intel at the high end because it means Intel don't really drop prices too much whenever a new chip comes out. As for me, I'll be waiting about two weeks before ED releases to upgrade, and hoping very much I don't have to upgrade at all. I'm quite happy with my dual core E5400, 4gb RAM, and 8800GTS. I could run Mass Effect 3 so I should be able to run ED too.
Click to expand...

You cant compare the performance you will get to Mass Effect 3 to ED, same way that you cant compare the performance you would get in Star Craft to ED, there all built on different engines for a start and TBH Mass Effect 3 is not a very demanding game, As far as Elite goes we will have to wait till the Alpha and Beta tests before we know for sure how demanding it will be.
 

rab

R
Unless you know the definite launch date for new tech don't wait just upgrade it if you need to, as others have said there is always something new just around the corner.

Performance wont always be what you expect either look at Ivybridge to haswell less than 10% in most situations, even the i7 920 if it is overclocked still holds it's own against the newer i7's when it comes to gaming even with graphics cards there performance has staled a lot although with the current generation from both AMD 200 series and NVidia 700 series there nearly all rebrands from the 7000 series and the 600 series, apart from the high end cards AMD 290's and NVidia GTX780's and Titan the performance gain while being good isn't amazing either.
 

Pyros

P
exioce said:
It's a shame AMD isn't competitive with Intel at the high end because it means Intel don't really drop prices too much whenever a new chip comes out. As for me, I'll be waiting about two weeks before ED releases to upgrade, and hoping very much I don't have to upgrade at all. I'm quite happy with my dual core E5400, 4gb RAM, and 8800GTS. I could run Mass Effect 3 so I should be able to run ED too.
Click to expand...

actually the difference in the best system for both is about 5%. Whatever that is worth
 

Clerec

C
Liqua said:
With all due respect to the OP ignore him. There is always something on the horizon that suggests you should wait until you purchase and if you do that you will never buy anything.
Click to expand...

Ah... I see.

Of course, I know all of this for a long time now - nothing new and not really worth talking about. There's always a bigger upgrade (that can be done whenever).

"Recent developments", however, suggested that Frontier may have released game specs - something very much worth talking about, or at least finding out! :)
 

Aewarin Jameson

Aewarin Jameson
Clerec said:
"Recent developments", however, suggested that Frontier may have released game specs - something very much worth talking about, or at least finding out! :)
Click to expand...

In case you didn't know they have released some Alpha requirements, to which release should be more optimised and demand less. Quoting Michael:

  • Direct X 11
  • Quad Core CPU ( 4 x 2Ghz is a reasonable minimum)
  • 2 GB System Ram (more is always better)
  • DX 10 hardware GPU, 1GB video RAM(my reasonably low end machine has a GTX 285 with 2GB)

But I don't think the OP was referring to this, more don't buy Super item X as in 10 months time they will release super item Y. I believe he was trying to be helpful as sometimes there are really cool breakthroughs that deserve waiting for.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom