Best time to upgrade?

[Carr0t]

AMD's just released their new Bulldozer chipsets. They didn't live up to expectations, which is why Intel felt comfortable putting their prices up a bit. Pity. I was hoping Sandy Bridge would drop in price a bit as a result.

Ivy Bridge is supposedly coming out first quarter 2012. My plan is to wait till that gets released and either pick one of those up if they just replace Sandy Bridge or probably get a Sandy Bridge chip if they drop in price considerably. I got my current Core 2 Quad when the i7 had just come out and it pushed the prices of the previous generation way down, but Ivy Bridge is just a die shrink with a little increased performance, so i'm not sure how much it will affect pricing.

[kwai]

Ivy bridge is out next year, i would wait till then, your current CPU is still quite good

[bobfoc]

I'm still running a Q6600 on one of my current systems and it still suffices for most tasks. It's only certain games that really hold it back.

Seeing that your system is still more than capable, I'd personally hang tight to see what happens.

The current Sandybridges 2500K - 2700K are great chips, and are slowly creeping into the secondhand market as those early adopters want to get in on some X79 action.

Worse comes to worse, you'll have longer to save for that new system.

[slim01_1985]

SB chips are awesome, but what can we expect from Ivy? Hexa Core?

[EvanJackPenn]

SB chips are awesome, but what can we expect from Ivy? Hexa Core?

Ivy Bridge is primarily based on the IGP recieving significant improvements - around 60% performance boost.

As it's shifting down to a small transistor size, overall peformance/power will increase ~20%

No hexa-cores, sorry. It'll be the same as the current Sandys

[SamuelDaniel]

I think Whenever you wants to upgrade you should go ahead. Best time never comes.

[Saracen]

I think Whenever you wants to upgrade you should go ahead. Best time never comes.

True enough, but depending on the objectives, some times are better than others. For instance, nabbing a recently superseded model just after the replacement is announced, when they're heavily discounted. Or conversely, not buying the current model just before a major upgrade comes out, if you'd benefit from the major upgrade and are prepared to pay for it.

[Saracen]

I very much doubt that, the highest end CPU you can buy is around that price. No one can speculate price till its released.

Some of us could, but aren't allowed to without breaking NDA. On this, I'm out of the loop too, so nobody need bother PMing hoping for a peek, because I don't have one ... and I wouldn't break the NDA even if I was in the loop. It's not that we can't, but that we won't.