system upgrade.

[Simaril]

My head hurts.

I was all keyed up to start the work once the Conroe initial release prices stabilized....but now I'm not sure anymore.

I've been seriously thinking about building this time, and its about time for an upgrade. Current system works OK, does what I need (although the little incremental software defect annoyances are almost to the point of a reformat clean start) Bottom line though is that although I really   really  really want a new system, I can string this one out for months if its really an advantage to do so.


I was thinking about the 6600 or 6700 conroes....but should I wait for quad core?

Or will quadcore be $1000, like the 6800 is now -- which would make lower price of the 6700 the primary benefit? (BTW Skuzzy...Newegg has that for $250 more -- is there a cheaper reliable source we regular guys can access?)

Will better MoBos be coming out?

Or....is this one of those "there's always something better on the horizon" situations, where you cant ever wait long enough to get the best/fastest at the cheapest, so you might as well jump whenever you're ready?

[Skuzzy]

Quad core will provide a very limited performance boost as compared to dual core's performance boost over single core, which is still marginal.

The only reason there is any performance boost comes from offloading threads to another CPU.  However, very few applications are threaded and even fewer run small enough threads to give any performance boost.  Once a thread cannot occupy the local CPU cache, it has to be fetched from memory.

I really do not see the cost/performance benefit of quad core CPU's.  I chalk them up to more marketing hype than anything else.  Remember this one fact.  The only performance gain you can have happens as long as the CPU does not have to access RAM or anyother external I/O.

Only one core can access the outside world at a time.  This includes RAM, disk, video card, USB, and the like.