Best time to build, now or next gen?

A couple of years after the 360 came out i bought a pc to match and/or surpass the console experience, 9800gt, intel duo 5200, 4g ram and to this day it works pretty damn good and performs better than ps3 and 360 for gameing, mods are an added bonus and games are cheaper in the long run i save money. I don't really care about pc exclusives...mainly because my rig can't run crysis but w/e :D, but i do like the option to choose the best system for playing multiplat games.

Recently i've been itching to build a new gaming pc after seeing Farcry 3 and Hitman Absolution, saw a 1080p video with hitman on ultra and was :o

However, i can't help ponder about the future, where i see the continuing trend from this gen to continue to the next in prioritizing console gaming over pc gaming. Strictly talking multiplat games here.

Should i stick with my gut instinct and wait for the next gen consoles to arrive to purchase a better PC counterpart a year or so later, or is today's technology "future proof"

What would you do if you had 1500 bucks right now, save it, or spend it?

I also understand that no one has a crystal ball, i'm just looking for opinions.

Thanks!

You could easily build a computer to last you a few years with that money.

I was on the same debate as you but gave in, and built a rig that runs all games on ultra and has for about a year now. Down the line I'm sure I'll need to upgrade the video card, but it's doing perfectly find handling anything I throw at it.

My opinion, build a rig and enjoy it.

Basically what DanielDust said. Console generations are strictly for consoles. PC hardware is constantly changing and improving, so buying good enough quality hardware at any point will last you several years.

I'm honestly waiting for 2013 and see what ATI & NVIDIA will have to offer with their next range of GPUs...

Have been an ATI fan for the past 5yrs so am more interesting in seeing if they announce/launch the 8***series and then build a new PC around it..

the one I got should do the job for the time being :)

The time to build was Yesterday. get crackin.

OP... Honestly you "should" have jumped now during Black Friday this year... Anyone who recommends you wait to see what there is next year is an idiot.

No generational leap between GPU to GPU to CPU to CPU is ever going to be "significant" as in worth waiting for. If it were then people would stop buying current hardware to wait for it and would not buy new hardware and stick with it when they get it. Every new line of GPU, every new line of CPU is only "so-so" better.

I have a PC I built almost 4 years ago and gave to my bro... Had a Q9550, GTX260, 8GB of RAM, etc... Cost about $1100 in 2008... That computer can still max 99% of games out there with the other 1% being either extremely rare cases (Metro 2033) or very unoptomized games...

My current PC... i5 2500k, GTX 680, 16GB, Three 256GB SSDs in RAID0. There are quite literally no games coming out in the foreseable future that will utilize all that power (short of Rome II with 20,000 troops or something)... If you sit around waiting for new hardware to get the best, you will be waiting forever because there is a new line every year.

Anyone who suggest waiting at all to build a PC short of it being just on the eve of a new line of hardware releasing making old hardware gets cheaper is an idiot.

i doubt next gen consoles won't even match todays current pcs. so i would just build now. next gen playstation and xbox won't be here for at least a year or more... maybe 2+ years even. look at the wii-u, its cpu is less powerful then the xbox 360 and it came out way back in 2005 i think. big failure if you ask me to have a cpu in a new console that can't even match current gen consoles.

many of us are clocking our cpus over 4.6ghz or higher, theres no chance the next gen consoles will be able to even match our current gen cpus, even if they are released 1-2 years from now.

plus next gen consoles will still be just running at a max resolution of 1920x1080, that won't require much more gpu power - even adding dx10 or 11 into the graphics. most current pcs are going beyond that, 2560x1440 is a standard resolution now, and thats a big bump over current hd tvs. you won't see much of a gpu upgrade in the new consoles. the high end 6xx nvidia and 7xxx amd gpus will likely be more powerful then whatever they will put into it their next gen...

if either sony or microsoft was smart, they'd try to future proof their machines and go over the needs currently and make the consoles capable of running beyond current resolutions for the next gen hd tvs that will be out sooner then later.

Best time to build is "all the time." There is no sense of waiting for the next big thing. With $1500, I build a new gaming PC lol. Yeah, that would be really fun. :)

The term next gen does not exist on PC, those are words used to manipulate the console crowd. Best case scenario you will see "currently" average hardware on the "next gen" consoles (because of the price), hardware won't evolve just because new consoles got released, there's a certain limit that goes slightly higher each year, not way higher. This answer can be given yearly, if your PC isn't good enough for your needs, upgrade, if you wait one more year, hardware overall will be slightly better for a better price, if you wait another year, the same, if you wait yet another year, the same, if you wait 4 years, same and so on.DanielDust

Pretty much this, he explained very well.