worth spending on socket 775?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Personally I would not even pay that much as socket 775 is a dead platform. Core i7 has replaced it at the top end and Core i5 will replace in a couple of months at the lower end.

Scan had P35 motherboards such as the MSI P35 Neo2-FR for around £63 recently too. I would have put the extra 60 quid towards a 45nm quad such as the Q9450 which has lower power consumption,better performance per mhz and support for SSE4.1! I picked up an Asus P35 motherboard secondhand for around 25 quid a few months and it will run any of the current Core2 processors.

[Saracen]

Personally I would not even pay that much as socket 775 is a dead platform. Core i7 has replaced it at the top end and Core i5 will replace in a couple of months at the lower end.

But the relevance of s775 being "dead" rather depends on your buying habits. If you're buying a machine with the intention of upgrading every few months, then maybe that's true. If you buy a machine and use ot for several years, then it doesn't really matter.

Over the years, several times I've bought at the leading edge, and more than once, a few weeks ahead of the leading edge as I've been able to physically get processors ahead of release, then actually pay for them on release day. The same applies, but less so, to motherboards. But I decided it was a mug's game.

I've bought the latest platform, with the attitude that it preserves upgradability. But it usually doesn't, unless you're planning a constant upgrade cycles to stay at the leading edge. Otherwise, in a year or two, if the socket hasn't changed, the chipset has, and if that hasn't, memory requirements have, and if that hasn't, then BIOS support for something or other has, or the latest USB spec' has been implemented, or Sata-II has replaced Sata-I.

It seems there's always something that means your platform is either out-of-date, or at the very least, has dropped behind the curve.

So now, I buy what suits me now and for the immediate future, and in two or three years (or whatever), I'll look and see what's available, and what costs what, and what performance level you get for a given spec' level.

Two principles guide my purchases :-

1) There's always a sweet spot of price-performance, and it's just about always a couple of levels down from the pointy end. Right now, for instance, I'd say 640GB hard drives are the sweet spot. What extra performance, or capacity, you get going about that gets exponentially more expensive as you go higher, but you don't save much by going lower.

2) There's always a premium to be paid for being an early-adopter in a product life-cycle. I don't care what it is - CPU, mobile phone, HD-TV, even CD players or VHS tape recorders back in the stone age. It's a known marketing strategy, to exploit those that must have very latest. It applies to a bloke a knew that ordered his new Ferrari for delivery on 1st August every year, despite rarely doing more than about 1500 miles in the old one, because he wouldn't be seen in a car with last year's number plate ..... right down to i7.


So my attitude is that if s775 does the job, and will do it for the duration I'm likely to have it, then I'm not prepared to pay early-adopter premium fpr i7, which of course means for me i7 isn't dead. It's actually the smart buy.

So how much actual say-to-day performance benefit will waekyns get from an i7 system. Only he knows. What will such a system give him, for the not-inconsequential premium it will cost him? Will it let him browse the web any faster? Nope. Will it give any performance benefit that he can tell in use (as opposed to measure with a benchmark) in Office-type stuff? I strongly doubt it. Will it enable him to play games that a good 775 system won't? I'd be very surprised. Will those statements hold true for a couple of years, or at least until the next upgrade? Probably. Will he see real-world benefits in ray-tracing or 3D modelling? Perhaps, but the extra money might be better spent looking at a video-card targeted at workstation graphics, like FireGL cards, etc.


In other words, I completely if somewhat long-windedly agree with Blitzen ( .... ) ....

There is no value AT ALL in the new chipsets yet.

Unless you have cash to burn, its not worth the spend.

[Funkstar]

In other words, I completely if somewhat long-windedly agree with Blitzen ( .... ) ....

Shock!

Which also relates to the first reply of this thread

The Quad core I built (spec to the left) isn't that old and i7 was out just a month or so after that. I do not regret building it as a similar i7 system would be about twice the price from what I can gather (though I admit as I have no need to look at pricing in detail I haven't).

I might be able to get a cheapish high end S775 chip to replace the one I already have at some point (having a late model motherboard means the BIOS isn't going to be a problem), but in relity I can see me keeping this rig for a long time to come. It will probably be a server at some point too

[Saracen]

Shock!

At agreeing with Blitzen on something, or being "somewhat" long-winded?

I know I'm normally the very epitome of the pithy and succinct reply, almost to the point of being terse, but I'm in a loquacious mood. What can I say?

[Saracen]

..... It will probably be a server at some point too

Good point. I normally manage to repurpose old machines, too. I'm currently running a 6-disc RAID 5 Ultra-SCSI server ..... based on a Pentium 2 550MHz (dual CPU). How's that for getting my money's worth?

[Funkstar]

What can I say?

Usually as much as you can

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But the relevance of s775 being "dead" rather depends on your buying habits. If you're buying a machine with the intention of upgrading every few months, then maybe that's true. If you buy a machine and use ot for several years, then it doesn't really matter.

Over the years, several times I've bought at the leading edge, and more than once, a few weeks ahead of the leading edge as I've been able to physically get processors ahead of release, then actually pay for them on release day. The same applies, but less so, to motherboards. But I decided it was a mug's game.

I've bought the latest platform, with the attitude that it preserves upgradability. But it usually doesn't, unless you're planning a constant upgrade cycles to stay at the leading edge. Otherwise, in a year or two, if the socket hasn't changed, the chipset has, and if that hasn't, memory requirements have, and if that hasn't, then BIOS support for something or other has, or the latest USB spec' has been implemented, or Sata-II has replaced Sata-I.

It seems there's always something that means your platform is either out-of-date, or at the very least, has dropped behind the curve.

So now, I buy what suits me now and for the immediate future, and in two or three years (or whatever), I'll look and see what's available, and what costs what, and what performance level you get for a given spec' level.

Two principles guide my purchases :-

1) There's always a sweet spot of price-performance, and it's just about always a couple of levels down from the pointy end. Right now, for instance, I'd say 640GB hard drives are the sweet spot. What extra performance, or capacity, you get going about that gets exponentially more expensive as you go higher, but you don't save much by going lower.

2) There's always a premium to be paid for being an early-adopter in a product life-cycle. I don't care what it is - CPU, mobile phone, HD-TV, even CD players or VHS tape recorders back in the stone age. It's a known marketing strategy, to exploit those that must have very latest. It applies to a bloke a knew that ordered his new Ferrari for delivery on 1st August every year, despite rarely doing more than about 1500 miles in the old one, because he wouldn't be seen in a car with last year's number plate ..... right down to i7.


So my attitude is that if s775 does the job, and will do it for the duration I'm likely to have it, then I'm not prepared to pay early-adopter premium fpr i7, which of course means for me i7 isn't dead. It's actually the smart buy.

So how much actual say-to-day performance benefit will waekyns get from an i7 system. Only he knows. What will such a system give him, for the not-inconsequential premium it will cost him? Will it let him browse the web any faster? Nope. Will it give any performance benefit that he can tell in use (as opposed to measure with a benchmark) in Office-type stuff? I strongly doubt it. Will it enable him to play games that a good 775 system won't? I'd be very surprised. Will those statements hold true for a couple of years, or at least until the next upgrade? Probably. Will he see real-world benefits in ray-tracing or 3D modelling? Perhaps, but the extra money might be better spent looking at a video-card targeted at workstation graphics, like FireGL cards, etc.


In other words, I completely if somewhat long-windedly agree with Blitzen ( .... ) ....

I was referring to the motherboard and to Time Bandit's post. It is sometimes useful to read the whole post - eh!!I think that paying over £100 is waste of money personally for a socket 775 motherboard now. By the time PCI-E 2.0 becomes a major deciding factor your CPU will be holding you back. It would be better to put the money into a faster processor as I stated. Since basically apart from the low power quads coming out soon it is unlikely Intel are going to be releasing anything significantly faster in socket 775. Hence it would be better to get the fastest processor you can afford as even P35 based motherboards would support them.

Also investing in the faster processor is better financially as you could sell it in the future at a higher relative price than a cheaper one. Many people may want to update their older PCs with a newer processor for example that they can just drop into their older systems. However motherboards tend not to hold their value as much.

However IMHO Time Bandit should get a Core i7/i5 or AM3 Phenom as a high end system. It would mean waiting a few months but such a system will have a longer lifespan for similar overall cost.

I personally have no issue waiting a few months for new tech if I am doing a full system update. I waited about around 6 months until Core2 processors went down in price to get my existing system in late 2006 and I was upgrading from an old Athlon XP system. If I upgraded sooner I would have been stuck with a Pentium D based system with probably very little upgrade headroom. Even the top end Pentium D would have been rubbish by todays standard. My overclocked E4300 has given two years of good service for not much cost.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

here is what i would say, if you can afford a i7, get that, you wont be disapointed and it will last you longer then a dual core and outperform it especially when you do SLI apparently.

go with what your heart says because either choice is very good and not a waste of time and money. i am coming from a pentium 4 to a i7 btw so you can imagine how often i upgrade. my next upgrade may be the core 10 or the i20 by the time im ready lol

[Saracen]

Usually as much as you can

But I'm very selective. I only ever do that in two very specific situations: when I'm given the chance, or when I'm not.

See ..... I'm highly selective.

[Pob255]

I was referring to the motherboard and to Time Bandit's post. It is sometimes useful to read the whole post - eh!!I think that paying over £100 is waste of money personally for a socket 775 motherboard now. By the time PCI-E 2.0 becomes a major deciding factor your CPU will be holding you back. It would be better to put the money into a faster processor as I stated. Since basically apart from the low power quads coming out soon it is unlikely Intel are going to be releasing anything significantly faster in socket 775. Hence it would be better to get the fastest processor you can afford as even P35 based motherboards would support them.

Yes but the problem with that is that you cannot get hold of the good midrange p35 motherboards anymore.

The only p35's available in most places are the high end p35's which cost the same as the good p45's (£100-120)
On top of this we are starting to see some good mid range p43's and p45's coming out now.
eg
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Biost...-SATA-RAID-ATX

The socket 775 is far from dead, only when intel start bringing out low cost new socket cpu's and motherboards will we see the phase out of 775, that said I don't see any new cpu's coming out, although intel may do a low cost "pentium quadcore" before the end.

Saracen:
You missed one point in connection to price sweet spots, last generation stock clearance price drop. These periods can be very short but often let you get a real bargin just before or after the release of the next series/upgrade
Good example I picked up my 9800gtx for just under £100 just at the point when the 9800gtx+ was coming out to replace it and at that time it was a good £50 off the price of 9800gtx or 9800gtx+
And back from when the core2 chips went from 1066 to 1333 and then again when they dropped from 65mn to 45mn

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Anyway I was just making the point that you can good motherboards for around 80 quid and under. When the Core i5 comes out socket 775 will be essentially dead anyway. If Core i7 is the >£200 market then Core i5 is definitely going to be below £200 anyway. I could see the Core i5 and the AM3 Phenom II being the main competitors in the >£80 by the end of the year.

[dave87]

I did, on the basis that I don't really need a Quad Core now, certainly not one clocked to 3.1ghz, nor do I need more than 8gb of RAM, both of which I can achieve/have already achieved with my current setup.

If I continue gaming, then I may consider increasing the graphics card, or ultimately, as this system is quite quiet, turning it into a HTPC, and purchasing a new system, ala Saracen.

[Saracen]

......

Saracen:
You missed one point in connection to price sweet spots, last generation stock clearance price drop. These periods can be very short but often let you get a real bargin just before or after the release of the next series/upgrade
Good example I picked up my 9800gtx for just under £100 just at the point when the 9800gtx+ was coming out to replace it and at that time it was a good £50 off the price of 9800gtx or 9800gtx+
And back from when the core2 chips went from 1066 to 1333 and then again when they dropped from 65mn to 45mn

It's not quite what I meant by sweet-spot, but I certainly agree it's a great time to buy to get bargains. It's especially true where product changes are more about fashion and marketing than about true improvements. It happens with cameras (though not always), with TVs, with hifi, and (IMHO) most especially with cars. But the reason it's not quite what I meant by sweet-spot is that, as you say, it's usually a brief period. Jump to early and you miss the best deals. But if demand is higher than you think, and you wait just a bit too long, you miss the boat.

What I mean by sweet-spot (and it's subjective as to exactly where it is for each of us) is based on what economists would refer to as the marginal return. For a given amount of extra money, how much extra whatever do you get? For hard drives, look at the cost per gigabyte and see where the cost jumps. For hifi speaker cable, you can get a significant improvement in sound by spending some money on half-decent cable, but (again, IMHO) the amount of increase you get per pound spent rapidly decreases, and fairly early on. Do you get a detectable improvement by spending £100/metre rather than £90/m? Maybe, but I sure as hell wouldn't pay it. What about spending £5/m as opposed to 50p/metre (on bell wire, fort instance). Well, that I would do.

That's what I meant by sweet-spot .... the point just before the marginal increase in capacity/performance/sound quality (delete as appropriate) becomes to small to be justified by the increase in price. But because exactly what is justified varies according to our needs, subjective judgement and financial means, it may well be in a different place for each of us. And, of course, where that spot is moves over time, and with PC gear, it tends to move pretty damn quickly.

Right now, i7 is past my sweet spot. Prices will presumably fall over time, and sooner or later, it'll be the sweet-spot. But for me, not yet.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's not quite what I meant by sweet-spot, but I certainly agree it's a great time to buy to get bargains. It's especially true where product changes are more about fashion and marketing than about true improvements. It happens with cameras (though not always), with TVs, with hifi, and (IMHO) most especially with cars. But the reason it's not quite what I meant by sweet-spot is that, as you say, it's usually a brief period. Jump to early and you miss the best deals. But if demand is higher than you think, and you wait just a bit too long, you miss the boat.

What I mean by sweet-spot (and it's subjective as to exactly where it is for each of us) is based on what economists would refer to as the marginal return. For a given amount of extra money, how much extra whatever do you get? For hard drives, look at the cost per gigabyte and see where the cost jumps. For hifi speaker cable, you can get a significant improvement in sound by spending some money on half-decent cable, but (again, IMHO) the amount of increase you get per pound spent rapidly decreases, and fairly early on. Do you get a detectable improvement by spending £100/metre rather than £90/m? Maybe, but I sure as hell wouldn't pay it. What about spending £5/m as opposed to 50p/metre (on bell wire, fort instance). Well, that I would do.

That's what I meant by sweet-spot .... the point just before the marginal increase in capacity/performance/sound quality (delete as appropriate) becomes to small to be justified by the increase in price. But because exactly what is justified varies according to our needs, subjective judgement and financial means, it may well be in a different place for each of us. And, of course, where that spot is moves over time, and with PC gear, it tends to move pretty damn quickly.

Right now, i7 is past my sweet spot. Prices will presumably fall over time, and sooner or later, it'll be the sweet-spot. But for me, not yet.

With cameras buying decent lenses is always the best investment IMHO. More expensive dSLR cameras are better built and have better usability in extreme conditions but it i surprising how many people will buy £500+ dSLRs and then use the rubbish kit lense still!!

Funnily enough I have got better pictures out of a higher end compact camera than some people have got out of dSLRs costing much more!!

With Hi-Fi how much you spend on cables and interconnects depends on how much your system costs. If your amp,cd player and speakers cost over £6000 it maybe worth spending a few hundred quid on cables and interconnects.

However for most systems below £2000 the £5/m to £10m cabling is more than good enough. The same goes for interconnects- any of the £30 to £60 ones would suffice.

[Pob255]

That's why I said "in connection to price sweet spots"
These "upgrade coming soon, price cut the current stuff to shift it" occure sparadically and become short lived sweetspots.
They can also happen in another form, that of "the compeitor is bringing out their new thingy-me-bob quick price drop are current stuff to steal there thunder!"

Both of these cause short lived shifts in the sweet spot, but you have to jump on them fast.
Because even if it is a bit more than you'd normally be willing to pay the big jump in price vs performance/quality factor


I've got another example here (and this is relevent to the whole thread), When I built my gf a pc (a few years back) I had the option of a socket 775 or 478 with a 3ghz P4 ht
Now The 478 was rappidly dissapering at the time while it did majorly limit upgrade potential there was great saveing, I could of got the 775 p4 and a cheap 775 motherboard, but instead I got a far better 478 motherboard and p4 for the same cost.
Now from my experience with the early 775 motherboards esp the cheap ones, it's very doubtful it would still be running today and the upgrade potential is still just as limited as they cannot use core2 cpus. (I know this from many of the old 775's we have at work which are constantly having problems)
And yet that p4 3ghz 478 is still running well to this day, she's still using it to scan, edit and colour her A3 comic art work.

A good bit of kit can last a good long time depending on it's use, in the same time I've gone through 4 graphics card, 3 motherboards, 3 cpu's, 3 PSU's, 3 hard drives (one complete system upgrade and other minor upgrades)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The main issue is that with the weak pound a lot of the socket 775 motherboards and processors have jumped up in price now. The same goes for graphics cards too. If anyone was buying or upgrading their socket 775 system the "sweet spot" would have been around two to three months ago.

I bought a Sony A200 a few months ago for just over £210 and since then the price of the camera is much higher now. Companies like Nikon are increasing the price of their dSLRs too!! The secondhand prices of the lenses also shot up!