New Tech's coming soon? Should I wait?

[kajinofe]

Hello,

I was just curious to when these new technologies come into the market.

ddr2
pci-ex
btx
dual layer dvd burners

I haven't been updating myself on these for quite a while now, and I had a sudden urge to building a new rig for myself maybe perhaps this coming summer. I'm currently using a Dell 866 MHz 256 MB ram system. Bought that in 2000 so yeah... Kind of old for gaming. I would really like to start playing those FPS games without lag and of course Half Life 2, Doom 3 and what not~

So could you guys tell me some dates to when those above tech's come in and whether I should wait for them or just go ahead and build it right now?

If I build one now, would I be able to play some of the games that will come out maybe in 2005? Those 3d games really take up resource nowadays.

Thanks in advance and have a good day guys~

[rpertusio]

DDR2 is expected to be in the market in May.

PCI-Express is expected to become mainstream by the end of 2004, but many hope that it will come sooner. I am not sure of this though, someone may have better information.

I'm not aware of BTX becoming mainstream until next year, but I could be wrong.

Sony is likely to have their DVD-9 drives (DRU-700A and DRX-700UL) in May. Other manufacturers should be stepping up soon, but I don't have any definitave dates.

I would wait for DDR2 and the DVD-9 drives. PCI-Express seems quite promising, but I don't have any real estimate of when it will arrive, and BTX seems quite distant. Someone else may have some better recommendations.

- rp

[Chiguy]

With PCI-E, you'll also need PCI-E cards to fully take advantage of it.

edit: whoops, it's PCI-E, not X.

[tgxiii]

PCI-Express is actually PCI-E, not PCI-X.

PCI-X has been around in servers and such.
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/s.../pci-x-qa.html

New technology is great, but I'm not looking forward to them. I just spent my money on an ATX motherboard and case, an AGP video card, and DDR memory.

[kajinofe]

Thank you for the replies.

Hmm.. It's really hard to decide when I'm at the eve of new tech's coming out soon, but yeah those new tech's would really have to be tested for a period of time.
One more questions. Are the graphcs card companies such as nVidia and ATI making cards that would take advantage of the PCI-E slot? If so, when are they coming out?

[HeadBand]

the socket t mother boards from intel will be realeasd on june 21 they will support ddr2 lower ends with ddr1 still and pci-express other chipset makers should follow shortly after and they will probobally have fed into the market by the end of july amd is likley to not adopt ddr2 for a while but pci express amd boards should come out around the same time as the pci express graphics cards which i assume is around the time the intel motherboards come out you can already buy ddr2 chips just what motherboard are you gonna put it in

from what i have heard dvd-9 should be availible in the fall an i have heard nothing about btx for a while either

[kajinofe]

Cool so dual layer DVDs should be there in a bit!
If I were to build a new rig right now I had these companies' components in mind:
CPU: AMD (preferably 64-bit if it's aggreable from decent amount of people)
RAM: 1 GB - 2 sticks DDR (DDR1 or DDR2)
Video: ATI
Sound: SB
HDD: WD1200JB Special Edition (bought that a year and a half ago and planning to just use it without buying a RAID ready HDDs)
MOBO: Need serious advice on this concerning my first post ~~;

The usage for this rig would be 99% on gaming so again, I'd like to have some opinions. Thanks a bunch