OT: Hardware opinions sought

[Anne Wilson]

On Wednesday 12 April 2006 18:19, Dan wrote:
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > I know that PCI Express was tipped to be something to watch, but
> > that was a good while ago.  Since I haven't seen much mention of it
> > recently I wondered if it was another thing that hadn't lived up to the
> > promise.
>
> On the contrary, PCI Express is a very real standard. If you look at any
> high-performance graphics cards, they _are_ PCI-express (barring the odd
> release of the AGP 7800GS), and the "newer" AMD athlon 64s are socket
> 939, which means it goes in PCI-express supporting motherboards. The new
> line of AMD chips coming out later this year are only going to have one
> socket, for PCI-express motherboards; socket 754 will still be around
> for AGP motherboards, but I have a feeling they're going to start to
> dwindle in numbers when the new CPUs are for PCI-express and only old
> ones support AGP. I don't know as much about the new Intel line but I
> imagine a similar situation.

So presumably it just took a little longer than expected.  OK - I'll watch out 
for reviews.

> [snip]
> All in all, the question is whether you are willing to get a new
> motherboard and CPU to support the new slot; if you are, I would suggest
> waiting until Intel and AMD both release new sockets later this year;
> AMD's new chips _may_ fit in old socket 939 or perhaps 940 boards, but
> Intel's definitely won't fit in socket 775 or anything that is currently
> out. I'm definitely not upgrading my CPU or memory until the new lines
> come out, when I might eventually get a new motherboard/CPU/memory all
> at once.

Thanks for the info, Dan.  It sounds as though there is plenty of time to 
think about this.  His course doesn't start until September, and with any 
luck, by then we'll have a better idea.

Anne
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