When Should I Start?

[Scorpiоn]

If you haven't read the Sieg Gott thread, I'll sum it up for ya: I get a new 'pooter for Christmas!  What bothers me though, is I don't want my system to be outdated by light yeays upon first boot up.  While, yes, no system is really up to date, I want to make the system at a time when I won't be old as air in a month.  When's the best time?

[ATI_7500]

oh,well ,get it around christmas,when the prices for hardware drop.

[Scorpiоn]

Well, there was a double post, so I hope Swanny reads this one.

What about January?  I might not be able to get it during December, but right after.

[Daz]

yeah over here (UK) we normaly have an onslaught of january sales.....thats the time to get your stuff around about january 5th - feb 30th

[Scorpiоn]

Thanks.  That exactly when I planned to build it.

[congo]

This isn't related to time, but to price, if you are going to

buy the latest 64bit CPU, read no further, but if you are

budget conscious, this is for you.

The benchmark below was done yesterday on my

system, AMD XP2600+ CPU, Soltek SL-75FRN2

Mainboard, 1024mb PC2700 RAM

This is a multimedia instruction intensive cpu benchmark.

I went into Bios and bumped my cpu multiplier from 12.5

to 13. So the computer now reads it as a XP2700+ cpu.

I notched up the front side bus speed from 166 to 170,

a very modest overclock.

I set the CL2.5 RAM CAS latency to CAS 2.0 and this has

run fine like this since April 2003.

----------------------------------------------------------

The RED and BLUE bars are my CPU results.

Just below that is what a standard XP2600+ perfoms at.
(also an XP2800+ rating and speed is same as XP2600)

The next entry is the XP3200+ CPU rating.
(compare this with my slightly overclocked XP2600+ !!! )

And now an AMD Athlon 1.2 gig CPU.

Below that is the P4 3gig cpu without hyperthreading.
(the P4c runs on an 800mhz FSB with hyperthreading
etc. and is somewhat faster)

A quick glance at performance / price ratios makes
certain purchase decisions look a bit silly.

[Scorpiоn]

I don't plan on 64 bit, but I don't plan on overclocking either... at all.