Blade Edge

So I was considering upgrading my PC from a Core 2 Duo to a Core 2 Quad (among other things) this holiday season to blow some of my leftover cash from the year. I knew the more recent i7/i5 CPUs would not work on my socket LGA775 motherboard and I didn’t want to buy a new one, so a Core 2 Quad was really my one and only upgrade option. But I realized that, despite the fact that I knew Core i7/i5 wasn’t compatible with my mobo, I didn’t really know anything about this new processor. I had never taken the time to see what all the fuss was about.

So of course I turned to MaximumPC, which has a great article on exactly what the new Nehalem processor family is all about. The more I read, the more convinced I became to buying a new mobo and a more recent CPU. But there was a snag – a new hexacore (6 core) CPU is just around the corner (early next year) and the boards that will support it are the more expensive variety of socket (socket LGA1366) that is available today. Well, what’s a few more months, right? By then the motherboards will be cheaper, which will help offset the new Core i9 chip price, and I’ll have 6 cores to play around with, which sounds very good to my multi-tasking self.

Furthermore, I realized that if I bought a Core 2 Quad, I would have a perfectly good Core 2 Duo sitting around doing nothing. I hate wasting parts and I hate re-selling parts. I plan to take my current Core 2 Duo mobo/CPU and use it as a basis for a multimedia PC to hook into my HDTV.

I’m glad I didn’t consider this processor switch earlier in the year and ignored Core i7/i5 when it first came out, despite all the hype I was seeing about it. I might not have been able to wait for Core i9 that long.