The newest components are tempting,
but you can save a lot of money by going for hardware that’s a little older
There’s always something tempting about
owning the latest hardware. It’s hard to say exactly what makes it so enticing.
Could it be the buzz of being one of the first to try new features? Knowing
that you’re on the cutting edge? Having access to technologies almost no one
else has undoubtedly all this and more.
The
newest components are tempting, but you can save a lot of money by going for
hardware that’s a little older
As much fun as it is to drop your hard earned
money on the latest components, there’s an inconvenient reality about the
latest hardware. It’s not just desirable and impressive: it’s also over-priced
and unnecessarily powerful. Let’s face it. We’re all aware that if the
computing industry tried to keep up with the high end of technical
capabilities, most of us wouldn’t have any hope of playing games or running
common applications.
The average computer is running on hardware
several years old. If you have the money to keep up with it, that’s great, but
most of us can’t afford to keep our systems on the cutting edge.
However, the shrewd buyer knows that the
real bargains can be found in old, previous-generation hardware. When new stuff
goes on sale, retailers and manufacturers are keen to get rid of their old
stock to free up space, both in warehouses and on shelves. That means, if
you’re willing to wait, you can have a computer that’s consistently a little
way ahead of the curve without having a bank account that’s consistently behind
it.
To help you achieve this Nirvana-like
balance of desire and fulfilment, we’ve done a few case studies of current
generation hardware and compared them to their previous iteration to see if we
can come up with a few rules about how you should approach buying previous
generation hardware.
Intel CPUs
Intel’s processors are currently the
undisputed kings of desktop computing, having fended off competition from AMD
at all but the lowest end of the market, where AMD’s competitiveness is only
assured through massive price cuts on ostensibly ‘better’ CPUs. Intel’s
dominance has led the company into a difficult situation, though: it’s now
competing with itself.
Intel
Core i5 Processor
Current Generation: Ivy Bridge CPUs
Launched in April 2012, Ivy Bridge is the
codename for Intel’s latest iteration of their desktop CPUs. Following up on
2011’s Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge chips are distinguished by their die-shrink of
the microarchitecture from 32nm to 22nm and use of new Tri-Gate Transistors.
Since they use the same socket, the chips and motherboards are backwards
compatible with Sandy Bridge chips. The chips also add support for PCI Express
3.0, faster RAM, and improved graphics support and performance. One of the most
popular Ivy Bridge chips, the Core i5-3570k, retails for $289 and has a
Passmark CPU Mark score of 7,126.
Last Generation: Sandy Bridge CPUs
Developed to replace Intel’s Nehalem
architecture, Sandy Bridge CPUs contained new GPU components and allowed for up
to 16 logical cores (on eight physical) through Hyper-threading. A shift away
from previous design philosophies, Sandy Bridge chips integrated the memory
controller, graphics processor and central processing unit onto a single die,
packaged as a processor.
The Sandy Bridge equivalent of the Core
i5-3570k is the Core i5-2550k, which retails for $240 and has a Passmark CPU
Mark score of 6,735, making it only 6% slower than the Ivy Bridge chip, but 17%
less expensive. A clear bargain.
Radeon
HD 6970
This does, of course, assume that you can
live without the additional features Ivy Bridge offers. Looking at the
differences between the two generations, the bulk of Ivy Bridge’s additions are
tilted at the high-end of the PC market. PCI Express 3.0 support, multiple 4k
display output and better support for faster RAM are all features that are
unlikely to trouble someone simply looking to upgrade their processor. Clearly,
if you’re building a high-end system from scratch, Ivy Bridge’s features will
prove necessary, but if the objective is to speed up an existing system, Sandy
Bridge currently gives a better deal.
However, what this demonstrates is the
importance of doing your maths when you’re trying to decide whether a
last-generation purchase makes sense or not. Ideally, you should measure the
difference in performance between two pieces of hardware then compare the cost.
We used Passmark’s readily available benchmark scores values as a way to
quantify performance, but you can do it however you like - it could be the
frame rate of a specific game, SSD drive capacity or even case volume.
Whichever quality of the hardware you’re basing your decision on, that’s the
one to quantify.
To turn the difference between the absolute
values into a quantifiable relative one, all you have to do is divide the last
generation values by the current generation values (i.e. Passmark 6,735 divided
by Passmark 7,126, $240 divided by $289). The resulting answer will show you
how the two generations compare, giving you the last generation’s performance
/price/etc. as a percentage of the current generation’s. The higher the
performance percentage is than the price percentage, the better the deal -
ideally, you want the performance to be as close to 100%, and the price to be
as far away from it, because that situation means the last generation of
technology is almost as good as the first, but costs far less.
Remember, though, that if the price value
is higher than the performance value, that’s bad - it means the current
generation is more expensive for what it offers, even if the actual price is
lower.
