When do you upgrade?

[Ojnod]

I upgrade whenever I see a good deal and I usually try to get double of what I had before(be that quantity or performance). In terms of processor speed I usually upgrade every time I can go up about 800mhz for around 200 bucks. I haven't built a computer from scratch in a while. This computer I am using now has gone through many hardware changes. It all started as...

Athlon 1600+
Gigabyte Mobo
256mb Ram
Geforce 3 Ti200
60GB IBM Hard drive
Black case with a window(feh I felt special with a window then, before all the premanufactered windows came)

About 9 months later I added a 30 gig drive

That lasted about a year then...

P4 2.4ghz
Asus P4PE
512mb Corsair PC-3200
New Blue cheiftec case

About a month later I added a 200GB hard drive

Another month I added a 9500 Non pro.

This lasted until the fall where I bought another 120gig drive

Then 3 months later I got a gig of Geil PC-3200.

Then a few weeks later I got a 9800 Pro 256mb

Then a few months after that I got a shuttle case/motherboard

Then about a month or two after that (this week) I got a P4 3.2c


I have gone through numerous optical drives in the time, I just get faster ones then I move the old one to another computer.

Some time next fall I am probably going to build a computer from scratch once again. This one is going to be mad fast, dual 64 bit (whatever is the best price/performance ratio), probably 2 gigs of ram and a speedy new video card.

[Terry Penrod]

.

I'll probably wait a while this time to see what develops with the new 64 bit CPUs, next gen GPUs with faster DDR2 RAM, PCI Express and possibly a bigger, better DVD standard. But who knows when all that stuff will become commonly available and actually used in games?

Cheers, Terry

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[Jagndeke]

My rule of thumb is to upgrade my system whenever I come along a great, too-good-to-pass-up game that plays crappy on my system. That's the signal to start looking at next gen component upgrades for me.

[DanTheManPR]

Whenever something breaks, or Xmas comes around. Or whenever I need something.

[RHooks]

When there's a game I want to play and the ol' computer won't handle it, it's time to upgrade.

[Tom Servo]

Absolutly as late as possible.

[Feuerwizard]

I´ll upgrade as soon as I get low FPS. Or as Jag said

My rule of thumb is to upgrade my system whenever I come along a great, too-good-to-pass-up game that plays crappy on my system.