QOTD: What Determines Your Upgrade Cycle?

I build a new pc when the next cycle of hardware becomes reasonably priced for example i bought my current pc once the 260gtx, Q6600 and DDR3 ram became a good price for the performance.

I dont go for a cheap pc but i wont pay massive amounts of money for it either.

I change one part a year and I look for the best money-price products. I overclock almost every part. When there are radical changes needed (migration AMD-Intel, or just a new socket) I change the whole system, only the case stays, and maybe some heatsinks and psu. I think this is less stressful on the budget than a completely new system on every 3-4 years, plus you stay in the game with performance.

I change parts when needed or when performance changes are significant.

ie, Just replace HDD-2 from 500Gig to 1Teg as old drive was the Seagate 7200.11 SD15 version and had to be replaced incased it died.

HDD-1 replaced 6 months ago from Raptor-74 to Vel.Raptor 150

2 weeks ago, Replaced Canon MP500 with iP4600 as it died.

Mainboard is still a Gigabyte 965 with a e6750, may replace it with a i5 quad at end of year or next.

Will never buy a branded system, except for NoteBooks.

Main factors: Compatability/support, value for money performance, longevity.

I don't need tomorrow's technology today at a price equal to last month's pay check. But I do like it when it comes out because it means I can have today's tech for the price of yesterday's coffee, and that is a GoodThing™.

Keeping up with the bleeding edge is costly & thanks to the number of more recent, non-compatible changes (AGP-PCI Ex, DDR-DDR2-DDR3, sockets, et al) - recycling spares just aint what it used to be...

...anyone interested in an Apocalypse 3D accelerator add-in card? Fully ISA compatible & really helps with those Asus VR glasses. It's like I'm really here typing this! Oh wait...

I like to keep it in sync with my girlfriends menstrual cycle, so when it's that time of the month I just bugger off shopping and tinker with my PC.

Price Price and Price, Best i can afford with the money in my pocket... And NO that does NOT include power costs, Couldn't care less about that.

(1) Laptop hard disk upgrades every 1 to 2 years as faster models (now SSDs) become available and this is one of the main bottlenecks. Also for reliability. Same goes to a lesser extent for memory upgrades.

(2) Significant speed advances, where a machine (laptop) or component is at least twice as fast as what I currently have might prompt an upgrade.

(3) Moving on to MS latest OS, due to features or for business reasons, usually prompts a laptop upgrade due to:

(a) OS included in purchase price.
(b) Memory upgrade limitations may prohibit continued use of existing laptop.
(c) Re-installing of software, which could take days before it's all configured in my case, might as well coincide with a new machine. Much prefer clean install over an OS upgrade install.

As long as my PC is stable, reliable and above the minimum requirements (preferably on or above the recommended requirements) of most and new PC games (for personal home PC).

I don’t go for the latest and bleeding edge in technology due to the extreme prices and uncertainness whether “this new technology” will catch on and stay on the market. (E.g. RAMBUS memory on the first P4’s…)

I will also try to recycle the old parts as far as possible when upgrading a PC rather than replacing the entire system all at once – unless it has suffered from a disastrous mishap like lightning damage or flooding or a complete technological makeover, or if it was a notebook.

I dont do a regular upgrade cycle. But as time goes on upgrade in fewer and fewer years. But I tend to buy the best bang for buck for each part. But a saw the benefit of monitor quality, Quad Cores and decent $200 GPU which motivated my most recent build.

These days, its my pocket. While I still had a job it was the framerate of the games I was playing.

1. When building system from scratch, i look all parts to be with the newes technology, so then can keep compatibility as long as it is possible.
2. usualy, once or twice per year some components are changed: cpu, ram, vga, hdd. i'm always seling those parts and the new one are not so costly
The last part on the upgrade is the mainboard (maybe 2x changing other parts, 1x mainboard...) and belive e, it is best to buy the most advanced and expencive motherboard, she will survive 2 cycles of the other parts

When price / performance makes sense to up-grade. Having said that, I was forced into a recent re-build due to 2 year old computer not posting. I was planning to up-grade next year around an i5 processor, but had to replace CPU/mobo last month.

Since i7 hardware is still too expensive, I replaced the case and went with another 775 CPU/mobo. I am re-using DDR2 RAM, GPU (up-graded 6 months ago), PSU, HDD's, etc.

As a Gamer, my upgrade cycle always has to do something with some games who raise the bar for grafics for a few years. When that happens I buy a PC that runs these games at max details very fine. So I know the pc holds out for a few years of gaming (but of cours for other things too).
"WHAT do I buy then" is another very important question. I build my own pc and I do not buy simply the latest and fastest hardware. But it has to feature some new or upcoming standards, so that I can keep the machine up to date via upgrading. I give you an example:
My last PC (before this one) I bought was at the beginning 2005. There was Doom 3, Far Cry and Elder Scrollsblivion.
I bought a PC with a socket that would live on for a few years (for maybe a CPU or ram Upgrade) with DDR2 800 support (Today: very cheap to upgrade)the "new" PCIe Grafics Bus, the board also supports SLI
I use the same pc still for crysis..

Well, Im a gamer, and I got a complete assembled PC on christmas 3 years ago, which didnt make me very happy, but the weakest component so to say was the GPU, I bought ATI Radeon 4770, I had Geforce 7600GT before, I never imagined this would increase performance this much, I play on 1680x1050, and games that I couldnt play on minimal details before, now run great on max details(Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Chronicles of Riddick...)
So, as a gamer, I try to upgrade the GPU first, and then play with other components.

My motivation is simply when my existing machine can't do what I need it to any more I upgrade, but that always means I go for an entirely new system every time. The simple reason is through careful investment at the beginning and overclocking my systems last longer than the architecture they're built on, so I have no upgrade path.

I whack a new hard drive or some more RAM in once in a while if I need to but that's rare.

I upgrade only when I really need to. For example, being an avid Unreal Tournament player, I really wanted to play UT3 when it came out. It simply wouldn't run on my AMD X2 4200 and my Radeon 9600XT so it was time to upgrade.

What's not that important to me is task performance (such as encoding songs in itunes, or zipping a file), but system responsiveness i.e. program loading times, menus etc. Performance gains here can usually be "reclaimed" by a clean OS install followed by being careful with what I install on my computer, without the need to upgrade.

I generally try to avoid upgrades which are brought on by temptation only. I started reading Tom's Hardware when I was researching my upgrade a year ago, but I became very interested in the latest GPU and CPU technologies, so I've been reading it pretty much daily since. This unfortunately often has me saying to myself "hmm, that GTX260 card is going pretty cheap, I wonder how much performance I would gain..." even though I know that I can run everything I actually use my PC for at high settings quite comfortably. I imagine that upgrading can become quite an expensive habit if not managed well. In fact, I blame Toms for supplying news on all that tempting new hardware.

I'd say, I'd need to be get a 300% increase in performance over what I currently have for low-midrange prices before I'd feel it's ok.

I generally upgrade when my motherboard can't take the processor I want. At that point, I'll generally upgrade my RAM, Motherboard and Processor. When I made the move from AGP -> PCI-E, obviously I upgraded the graphics card too. My last upgrade was to an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe, which I'm led to believe will support AM2+ chips with a firmware update, so it should last me a while.

I just upgrade when I get the money to upgrade.

No need to upgrade anymore - I will not buy DRM games. So the old hardware does fine. Now it's as bits break.

It used to be time to grade when the CPU speed doubled.
I would also buy the CPU that was about a version or 6 months back from the newest extreme mental price one.
Tthen I'd get the best mid range parts that gave bang for the buck. i'd pay a bit extra for silent parts!

i only buy a new parts when i cant do whatever my computer is required to do at a decent speed.

I have been putting off upgrading from/ AthlonX2 4200 / 2G RAM / X1950 / 2 x 120GB WD hdds / because I'm lazy and don't want to have to do all the installing / set up etc etc. That said I am also very specific in what I want so I will go to the effort of doing a great setup when I absolutely have to. This happened yesterday, when my OS hard drive failed. I had been running had this machine running since 2005, so 4 years is not too bad. Knowing I would have to spend my weekend on a full re-install I decided it was time for an upgrade - Core i7, 12GB RAM, HD4790, 4TB disk space.

I look for the best price to performance ratio every 5 years, apart from the gpu which i replace about every 2 years

I still use a 3500+ I've had for years now. Since I got it I have added an extra gig of Ram to take it to 2 gig and a 9500GT card. Don't game much anymore and anything that requires more bang I can obtain elsewhere (ripping my DVD's etc.). Runs my primary OS (Ubuntu 8.10) very well, as well as Vista (not too badly) when I need it and OS X runs lovely too. While it's running this well I can't see the point in upgrading. Could do with a new monitor but skint as usual

Only thing I have upgraded is my old (!) notebook to an NC10. My old 2200+ 256Mb had poor battery life, awful graphics, no DVD, weighed a ton and struggled even with XP. I'm skint but not so skint I can put up with that!

Basically, when it no longer does what I want it to do I upgrade. Simples.

i think i would only upgrade when my computer had fail to start. My budget is very tight. It is very tempting to upgrade to a more powerful computer parts replacing your system. Still the performance increase of your computer would not look spectacular as technology moves on and new things come out. Thats why i do not really care for upgrades unless i really need it. I just encouraged people to be happy and satisfied with what they have. I just all my components to get performance increase. Its way cheaper.

Usually I upgrade the second I feel the need to. Often if I am buying a new OS too. If I'm buying OEM, I'd rather have it tied to a new motherboard.

I also upgrade HDDs as soon as my primary one gets 90% full.

And sometimes I'll upgrade if a new technology is very tempting, such as Solid State Drives, or Blu Ray, maybe the new 2TB range of HDDs, 8-core systems (when they arrive). Etc.

I rarely do minor upgrades though, like I won't buy a 3Ghz Dual core if I have a 2.4Ghz dual core. I'll have to go Quad (which I have).

The next upgrade planned is either a SSD or a monitor. Probably an SSD, then monitor.

I always seek for value.
My latest pc I bought 3 years ago when Core Duo came out on notebooks. CD1.73GHz 2GB 120GB HDD Nv 7300Go
I'm using Visual Studio 2008 on it very well, latest Adobe Suite is going just fine. So only things I needed was plenty of HDD space, so every year gone by I doubled the HDD.
1.5years ago 500GB external
6 months ago 1TB external
next 6 months it's time for me to upgrade to i5 if it gets to be good enough and upgradeable enough. My desktop is still a P4 3GHz and 1GB DDR NV 7600. If AMD surprises me and puts same performance as i5 or more cores or more upgradeability then I'm going for it. If none does, I'll pass this one too.
Oh well, at least latest EA NFS UC is playable on my latest acquisition: 37" HDTV with wide gamut.

I tend to skip an entire cycle. For example I went from a Pentium 4 with HT and an AGP only motherboard to an i7 (bottom of the range) and associated toys (eg GTX 260). I'll upgrade pieces over the next year or two when the next (generally incompatible) generation comes out using "old" parts (so GTX 260 in SLI while the new cards are 500s or whatever they are at that time). When the next generation has been surpassed and prices have calmed down a wee bit, I'll leapfrog again.

I've been sticking with minimal increases over the past few years, first to 2gb of ram from 1 GB, then to a 5000+ BE athlon (now @3.1), I used to keep one step behind the current tier of technology but now i find you can be 2-3 behind and still not really notice.

I usually upgrade my entire pc when a new GTA game hits the shelves.