worth spending on socket 775?

[Saracen]

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!!

Absolutely right. My view, based on film as a "sensor" is that the camera body is a way of holding the shutter open for the right length of time, and a support system of the lens. I might be exaggerating a bit, but not much - if the lens is good and you expose for the right length of time with the right aperture, you get a good photo (well, you get a correct one .... whether it's good or not depends on the photographer's skill.

But these days, it's more complicated, due to the nature of the sensor, noise from background electronics, the amount and quality of in-camera processing, etc. But at the end of the day, a £300 body with a high quality lens is pretty certain (if used correctly) to produce a better quality image (sharper, less CA, less vignetting, etc) than a £5000 body if the less is bottletop quality.

Of course, you can get third-party lenses that are VERY good optically, and compare well with Canon/Nikon pro lenses at a fraction of the price, even if they aren't built as well.

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.

Again, agreed. Up to a point. Yes, certainly, the more you spend on a system, the better the chance of getting improvement on decent cables, etc. The marginal benefit logic still holds, though, and not just for the cables, but for the amp/CD, etc. If you (or me anyway, and I presume you) listen to a good £100 CD player and compare it to a good £300 CD player, you'll hear a marked difference. But that £200 buys you little or nothing if you're starting with a £2000 player, and comparing it to a £2200 player. You have to spend a LOT more to get a proportionate improvement ..... and in fact, by that time, I'm not sure you can get as much of an improvement as you could by throwing £200-£300 more at a £100 player. All this assumes, of course, that amp, speakers and most critically, the listener's ears, are capable of not being the limiting factor. There's little point in replacing a £1000 player with a £2500 player if it's running through a £100 amp and a £50 pair of speakers. Obviously, a system needs balance.

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.

Yeah, probably. My view is that at that level, it's as much about what sort of sound you like as it is whether cable A is better than B or not. For instance, I like bass to be deep, but not boomy. I find a lot (but not all) modern speakers to be boomy, and far too many amps don't keep the bass as tight as I like.

I know what I like, and I know how to find it. I use a couple of Bach organ pieces to test bass, and I use a particular soprano (Emma Kirkby, on Bach's Jauchzet Gott in Allen Landen) to test tweeter purity and cleanness. Ironically, though, despite how that sounds, most of my listening isn't classical.

My point, though, was that I know what I like, in terms of sound, but it doesn't mean you would like the same, or that it's right or wrong. It's just what I like. And my choice of whether a speaker cable (or interconnect, or amp, CD, etc) is worth the money is based on whether it gives me money for value. For instance, my CD player budget tops out at about £500 (with a rather venerable old Marantz KI-Signature deck), but I spent more than that on the cartridge for a Mitchell turntable.

PC stuff is a bit less subjective, though. Whether a hard drive's capacity per extra pound is worth it or not is subjective, but how much capacity (and performance) you get is pretty measurable. Broadly, I feel the same is true for processors. That's largely why I'm not enamoured of the price-performance from i7. We can certainly benchmark performance gains, but in real world use, how much benefit do we get? And that's why I say, for me, i7 isn't the financially smart move right now, because I don't see the value for money. But you, or others, might feel you do get value for money, just like you might not like my choice of speaker - your value judgements are different. Neither view is right nor wrong - it's down to what value we each place on things like upgradeability. My perspective is that future proofing is often, or usually, largely illusory, so I don't put much of a value on it. I buy for what will do the job I need doing now, and for my projected lifespan of a machine, which will be several years. And I don't see what I will need an i7 for that a good 775 won't do, now and for several years, and for a fair bit less money. Which leaves me scope for a new lens.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am reasonably happy with what I have at the moment Hifi wise. I currently have a MF XA200R integrated amp and Sony XB940 SACD player. The latter I got for a song ex-demo!! The older KI sig cd players are not to be sniffed at as they are great cd players.

I do need a speaker upgrade as I have some old HB series Heybrooks but they have done suprisingly well over the years. Having listened to some Triangles I may go for a pair of them eventually or perhaps some PMCs.

The problem is I could have a got a nice new pair already if I had not spent money on upgrading my pc,upgrading my camera setup,upgrading my headphones(got a Grado and also a headphone amp) and so on.

You a Nikon person by any chance??

[Saracen]

..... You a Nikon person by any chance??

Erm ..... I need to be careful how I answer that.

I'm not really an anything person. But I have a fairly extensive Canon system.

I was a Practica person for a while. Then Pentax. Then I switched to Minolta (back in the 7000i 35mm days). That lasted until it all got nicked, which gave me a clean slate. I went Canon (again 35mm). I then ended up with several lenses and Canon flash.

From that, Olympus, with the E-10 then E-20P, the latter of which I still have, together with the 3x TC, battery pack, etc. And an Oly 5050.

But then Canon DSLR's started getting reasonably priced, so I bought a 30D, some more lenses and the MT-24 twinflash.

So right now, I'm mainly Canon, with a remnant of Olympus.

But if it all got nicked again, giving me a clean slate, I'd be looking very hard at Nikon right now. Body-wise, I think they've probably got the edge, and that's probably the first time in DSLRs that that's been the case. Or maybe Leica. I haven't done Leica yet.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the Nikon D1 and D1X I had years ago.

If I tried to describe myself as an anything person, in camera terms, it'd have to be ..... raving schizophrenic.





And I shall now sit back and wait to see who's the first to charge through the insult door I left wide open with that last remark.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am mostly a Minolta person myself. I have had a few Minolta AF film bodies and I recently got a Sony A200 which I can use my Minolta lenses on!! May upgrade to an A700(or its successor) when I have more time for photography!! Also have a Nikon film SLR and some older lenses so I may get a Nikon dSLR body at some point too.

I also have a Pentax Optio 450(retired) and a Canon S60 too although the latter succumbed to the famous Sony early CCD death syndrome!! In the US people got their cameras repaired for free - however in the UK they have conveniently hushed it up!!

So I would say that I am a hybrid Sony-Minolta user with a spattering of Nikon, a pinch of Pentax with a bad aftertaste of Canon!!

I think it is time to take the pills now.....!!

[Pob255]

I think we're straying aa bit off topic here . . . But

While I've not gone into high end digital cameras or DSLR, I just don't take enough photos to justify it. Back when I did photography in college Pentax was the name for price point, good quality but half the price of others that were slightly higher quality.

back closer to topic it's not just the drop in the pound, most of the high end p35 motherboards for sale are around the same price they where back 6 months ago when it was two dollars to the pound.
But back in june/july was the real time to buy, you could still get the abit ip35 dark raider for under £80 and a q6600 for under £120.

[dave87]

Fortunately, I managed to get mine at June prices in September, lucky really

Oh, and it was a SLACR without the price premium

[Saracen]

...

back closer to topic it's not just the drop in the pound, most of the high end p35 motherboards for sale are around the same price they where back 6 months ago when it was two dollars to the pound.
But back in june/july was the real time to buy, you could still get the abit ip35 dark raider for under £80 and a q6600 for under £120.

I suspect that that's due to different reasons though.

It's true a lot more goes on than just exchange rates ... certainly 9over a time period. For a start, there are a series of very identifiable points in a product's life cycle. A good example is the price of a (audio) CD or the latest Hollywood DVD release, and to quite a large degree, computer games too. On release, typically, they're expensive. People willing to pay a premium will pay it to get them straight away. You only have to see people queueing outside Game or HMV to get a PS3 when it's released to see the principle. They must know that after the initial rush has died down, competitive forces will bring the price down.

Over a period (and it varies how long it is according to product type), price will drop. But the manufacturers love that initial period as it's where a lot of their profits come from, because their unit costs are the same (roughly) over the life cycle, but price sure as hell isn't. After that initial goldrush of people that'll pay premiums just to be among the first, there comes a period of decreasing price as demand falls. With most products it'll stabilise for a period. A game might spend a few months at £30, after a £40 initial price, but sooner or later, it gets relegated by newer releases, and perhaps newer versions of the same game. Eventually, it ends up in the £4.99 bargain bin.

But, and here's my point .... if you aren't in a rush to be at the bleeding edge, that £4.99 game is still the same game it was when it was £40. It's still going to take me as long to play, and I'll still get the same enjoyment as I would have a year or two earlier. A few months ago, I bought Project Gotham Racing 3 for XBox for (IIRC) £2.99. The guy in the shop tried to convince me PGR4 was better .... and it probably is, but it was £40. I've had a lot of fun from PGR3 for my three quid, and I saw PGR4 at £10 a few days ago, not £40.

The same is true, in my opinion, of i7. We're at the early-adopter premium stage of product life. In a few months, prices will have fallen. Of course, these days, what happens with the pound will have an impact on that, though heaven help the UK if the pound falls much further.

Obviously, re: p35 boards, supply and demand has an effect. So does stock if sellers have been holding it for a while, because if they have, they bought at what might well be a different price due to exchange rates not being then what they are now. But for a product that's only just been released, like i7 and x58 etc, they haven't had that much time to be affected by exhchangerates or stock holding, but might well be affected by short initial demand.

Oh, and by the way, ever noticed how when the latest techno gadget arrives, it always seems to be in short supply. Wii, PCS, iPhone, Core2 and Core Quad, Canon 30D ..... and so on. Is it a coincidence that supply always seems to be limited right at the time when demand is fervent and people clamouring for product? I think not. Manufacturers aren't that naive.

There's been no real shortage of Canon 50D though, and prices have fallen fairly consistently pretty much from day one .... though they stabilised now (exchange rates perhaps). So why no shortage? Perhaps because Canon appear to have released in earlier than intended because they were losing market share to some highly competitive Nikon products. It wasn't a case of losing that early-adopter premium so much as trying to avoid haemorrhaging users to Nikon, where of course, they wouldn't just buy the body, but lenses, flash, battery grips and so forth.

So yes, it's certainly more than exchange rates. But right now, as far as i7 goes anywhere, I reckon that's the major factor and also why Q6600 has been going up.

[Pob255]

Oh yes fully agree with you here Saracen.
I personally never like to jump on new things because they are new, ok I do cave into hype at times although never to the extent of camping out in front of a shop.
My current complaints with the i7 are:
A - Price, not just the cpu but also the motherboard and ddr3.
B - Direction, with the current talk that the low end cpu's are going to be a seperate socket, that makes for a serious limitation, at least with 775 you could buy a cheap cpu and know that later on you should still be able to get a better one without having to replace the motherboard.
C - Performance, the c2d is still a massively powerful cpu and very little make real use of quad, so do we really need an 8core cpu? what the heck are we doing that would require that much power? as I type this on my eeepc with it's lowly atom, single core, running currrently running at power saveing 800mhz, My main pc is still the good old e6600 oc to 3ghz and I have no issues with the speed