Whats coming soon in the PC world

[jackvdbuk]

being on a core 2 quad q9550 , its starting to crumble for me and i think ive done well to last this long with it.

looking around my idea chip would be a 4690k, but im wondering if its worth waiting for DDR4 boards to become more mainstream in the coming months and the new broadwell (i believe) to be released?

to be honest ive become out of the loop lately so not sure whats coming out soon and whats worth waiting for !

maybe 22nm nvidia chips would be a good time to upgrade? i dont mind waiting 1-4 months considering i have used this PC for the last 4-5 years for something a bit more "future proof and lasting"

[D-T]

I'm running an i7 960 at stock on x79 and, in order, I'm holding off for:

Intel's next die shrink (10nm Cannonlake; pencilled in for 2016)
USB 3.1
DDR 4
PCI-E 4.0

I'll also be looking for M.2 in whatever iteration is available at the time.

As for GPU, if you're not in any imminent need of an upgrade I don't think you're going to miss out by holding off a while longer – possibly as long as it takes for 22nm NVIDIA, if you're happy to wait but my guess is it'll be ~12 months minimum before we'll be hearing anything about this.

My old GTX 580 was starting to flag a bit and couldn't keep up with my Skyrim modding habit so the 970 hit a priceerformance (and features) sweet spot for me and I upgraded; been very happy so far! I'll be looking to upgrade to a 4k monitor as soon as we start seeing >30" displays with >60Hz refresh rates, so seeing that SLI 970s are capable of producing playable/comfortable frame-rates at 4K with G-Sync was probably what tipped me over the edge.

[kalniel]

looking around my idea chip would be a 4690k, but im wondering if its worth waiting for DDR4 boards to become more mainstream in the coming months and the new broadwell (i believe) to be released?

to be honest ive become out of the loop lately so not sure whats coming out soon and whats worth waiting for !

'Worth' is almost impossible to judge! We obviously don't know, but I wouldn't expect anything to be a major leap forwards any time soon. Broadwell-K will be out next year and give another incremental bump along the performance/power metric. DDR4 will eventually be worth it in that the tech will progress and we'll get more speed/capacity for the same cost eventually, though I wouldn't hold off on a system just to wait for it right now - it'll take a while to mature (particularly from the CPU/memory controller end).

maybe 22nm nvidia chips would be a good time to upgrade? i dont mind waiting 1-4 months considering i have used this PC for the last 4-5 years for something a bit more "future proof and lasting"

As far as nVidia go, I'd wait for a second generation on a new process, rather than first. For a first generation drop I'd tend to prefer AMD. But both have been so badly delayed I'd almost be looking at a node beyond 22nm now.

Or alternatively, rather than waiting for the first of new architectures/processes, get the best bang for buck now, and put the savings towards updating a little bit sooner in the future.

[D-T]

As far as nVidia go, I'd wait for a second generation on a new process, rather than first. For a first generation drop I'd tend to prefer AMD. But both have been so badly delayed I'd almost be looking at a node beyond 22nm now.

That's what I've been thinking but knowing NVIDIA (and despite having always been 'team green') they're not going to throw a new offering out there while they can still feasibly compete with refinements to their existing architecture at lower cost. I could, however, see them bringing out a top-tier offering in the professional sector with an astronomical price tag, to set the ground-work in manufacture and refining of the next-generation chips before we see the introduction of any commercial equivalents. Either way, I don't think we're going to see any consumer-grade parts on a new architecture for at least 12 months without AMD pulling something out of the bag that targets the enthusiast desktop tier to force their hand.

[OldFartAtPlay]

There is always something new coming out - I'm never certain that it is worth waiting! But you could get a Zp7X mobo, pentium anniversary processor and 8 gig RAM for < £200 now, and that mobo will support the upcoming raft of processors for another upgrade in a year or two. With graphics, leave an upgrade till you really need it, and then just see what is a good deal at the time.

[Funkstar]

I've idly looked at new systems to replace my ageing PC and came to the conclusion that you should just spend what you are comfortable with now as new "next generation" released in a few months will only be a small bump (in relative terms) compared to what is out now. And you will probably pay over the odds for that new generation when it comes too.

Gone are the days of a significant speed bump on a new generation of anything in PCs. Add in that they are amazingly powerful as it is, are you really going to notice a 5-10% increase outside of synthetic benchmarks

[badass]

As far as nVidia go, I'd wait for a second generation on a new process, rather than first. For a first generation drop I'd tend to prefer AMD. But both have been so badly delayed I'd almost be looking at a node beyond 22nm now.

Then you're in luck. No one has any intention of using 22nm apart from Intel. Everybody else is talking 20nm and 16nm.
It looks likely that TSMC's 20nm process will not be that long lived. There are rumours that Nvidia might skip 20nm completely, hold out on 28nm and jump straight to 16nm. No idea about Globalfoundries.

It also is currently looking like Skylake will appear a very short time after Broadwell. Not sure why Intel haven't just delayed Skylake so they can milk Broadwell a bit.

I've got a 3570k and a Radeon 6870 in a uATX chassis so I have no interest in anything CPU wise for a long time but GFX card wise I am waiting for 20/16nm in the hope that I can get something that uses a bit less power that the 6870 (for noise reasons) and decent minimum FPS at 2560*1440. If that doesn't happen, I'll just wait another generation.