Situation is this, currently have an ageing PC system and need/want to upgrade. Looking to drop about £2000 into a full new rig. Now I don't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or any other peripherals just the tower itself. Currently I'm running a q6600, 4GB ddr2 ram, 2x gt8800 in sli, 600w psu, and a very cheap basic case. It has a few hdd's that to be honest are probably on their way out with a power on time of 1100 days, so I think the only thing that could possibly be reused would be the sli bridge. The system is only really used for gaming, the odd but of media watching and Web browsing and that's about it. I've been looking into a few different builds, various different setups etc, thing is, is it worth upgrading now and going for an i7 sandy bridge, single 7970, ssd, 8-16GB of ram, or, would it make more sense to wait another couple of months until Intel and NvIdia release their next generation CPU's/gpu's? Many thanks for any/all input
I would be advisable to wait for Ivy Bridge and the new nVidia GPU's, but if thats too long (March) then grab yourself a great 1155 2600k build and then upgrade later on. I would wait if I was in your shoes though
IvyBridge is backwards compatible with SandyBridge s1155 motherboards, requiring only a BIOS update according to Intel. So you could build a brilliant machine now and just resell CPU and upgrade to IB if they pan out to be worth the cash splash. The hard part is the GPU. Having said that, you could buy a top of the range GPU now and just add another later when the price drops. The bottom line is that you could end up waiting for the next tech refresh forever. There's always something better 'in the pipeline' as soon as a new product hits the shelves - so I say just buy what you want now and leave yourself an upgrade path for later.
Im in a simlar position (smaller budget), on Monday Im going to buy an i5 2500K, 16GB and a PCIE3 motherboard. I couldnt wait for my upgrade so I have gone for the motherboard that will make it easy to upgrade if its worth it. Ivybridge and PCIE3 cards will be an easy upgrade when the time comes.
Snap - I have a real old machine (Athlon 64 X2) and my plan is to build a new machine this year. To be fair I've managed to keep this one going and still play modern games, just everything takes longer and longer... Bring on IB, my patience is waning!
