Upgrade time?

[Arbethea]

With the credit crunch reducing prices of hardware, do you think it's a good time to upgrade my PC?

I've got a 3.0Ghz Pentium D CPU (no dual/quad core), 1GB ram and an old ATI 9800 graphics card. Not the fastest of PCs, but as I don't play many new games it does well enough.

Will there be a big increase in performance if I get a new PC for about £600? ($1000 ish)

 

[Ian]

I guess from that pound symbol that you are also in the UK? If so, prices will be coming down a couple of percent as of Dec 1st because of the decrease in VAT from 17.5% to 15%.

There is some good hardware out there at the moment, but the only way to judge if it's a good time to upgrade is whether you really need it That PC isn't really slow, but if you are only using it to browse the net then I wouldn't worry.

What sort of things are you looking to use your PC for and then we could suggest some good options.

 

[Arbethea]

That's right, I'm from the UK (although actually South African).

I use my computer for a bit of everything, so I wouldn't say I need just a gaming machine or word processing computer. Something that is a good all rounder would be what I am after.

Dell seem to have some good offers on at the moment, but if it's better value to build from scratch then I'd do that.

Oh... and it must be able to run Windows Seven! :top:

 

[WindowsSe7en]

Now-a-days, building from scratch doesn't save much (if any) money becaude Dell for example you can customize a PC for very cheap. Building your won lets you have more control yes, but will it save you a ton? Probably not.

 

[Ian]

Now-a-days, building from scratch doesn't save much (if any) money becaude Dell for example you can customize a PC for very cheap. Building your won lets you have more control yes, but will it save you a ton? Probably not.

My last PC was actually a Dell as it was just so cheap They seem to have good offers on at quiet times of the year, and I couldn't build one for the same price so I went for it