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It has been about 2 years since I upgraded, feels like 5 years. Currently have i7-2600K @ 3.4 GHz, 16GB RAM, and 4MB GTX 680.
How often do you all upgrade? Has tech doubled since I bought mine?
Everything is working ok for me and I probably don't "have" to upgrade, but money is not really an issue and I really could use more power if I want to box more than 5 in Rift.
I upgrade something roughly annually; but its rarely a full system unless I hit a CPU bottleneck. It's been a bit over 2 years since I bought my last processor, so probably 80% of my current build is from then. However, 8 months after that I upgraded my 3d card. And back in November I upgraded all my monitors.
Most of my upgrades fall into the category of 'things are working pretty well....but they could be better.' That said, most were aimed at fairly concrete goals, e.g. going from hardware to software, going from 5 to 10, backing off high CPU usage while in game, bigger monitors, or attempts to improve system stability. Those are much better metrics than 'has tech doubled' IMO.
If money really isn't an issue, I say go for it.
I moved to my current IvyBridge-E system after over two years of having built my SandyBridge system with a 2600K. I really wanted to run my multiboxing accounts with higher video settings and be able to maintain good FPS, so an upgrade was necessary; but the upgrade was mainly justified because it helps me with video editing and what not.
Currently 5 boxing on a gtx 470, 2500K system and have reached the GPU Ram bottleneck,
so im saving money for a gtx 770 4 GB :) and waiting for X99 with DDR4.
I usually upgrade every 2yrs, now running a hex core system with 64gig mem, raid ssd and a single Titan video card, feeding (2) 20" & (1) 24" monitors. Should last more than 2yrs now.
May upgrade monitor(s) later on.
ASUS rampage IV black edition :)
Roughly every 3-4 years, I get a brand new system.
It's usually pretty close to the top of the line.
At the 2 year point, if the performance has dropped because an expansion has come out that has fancier graphics or whatever, I'd do an upgrade.
If I do an upgrade at this point, I keep the system another two years and get a brand new system at the four year (from the last brand new system) point.
If there wasn't an upgrade (or upgrades) done at the 2 year point, I usually get a new system at the three year point.
This summer would be the four year point, since the last brand new system and the two year point since the last set of upgrades.
However, nothing I'm playing comes close to pushing the system, at least at the settings I'm using.
If it's not broken, don't fix it...
I'll likely not do an upgrade this summer, but that means next summer is an almost guaranteed upgrade point.
Every 2 years sounds about right. I'll probably wait a few months after Haswell-E comes out before deciding what to do next.
I usually do a full system upgrade every 2 years, but my current system has lasted me for 4 years. now i think i'm ready for new system. Haswell-E 5960, probably a ASUS WS MB when it becomes available. quad channel ram, the new intel dc p3500 SSD, use my current titan vid card till the GTX 880s are available. nothing is set in stone however. i'll wait on the reviews. if the processor reviews are bad, i'll probably drop down to a lower Quad cores and save money, till theres a big boost in speed(not sure if this will ever happen again.)
I'm usually upgrading one component every 18 months. This time around was the SSDs. Last time it was the video card. Before that it was CPU/motherboard/memory (yeah, I see those last three as one component). I'm also keen on waiting until the "new car depreciation" has taken effect and the component has come down significantly in price. Typically, though, the trigger is that component X is now slow enough that it's causing issues in the games I wanna play, which usually works out to the slowest component in the system. GPU/HDD is a much more common bottleneck than CPU is for most of us I'd wager.
> GPU/HDD is a much more common bottleneck than CPU is for most of us I'd wager...
One major exception: WildStar