Next year’s tech innovations will
make your rig work harder, better,
faster, stronger!Next year’s tech innovations will
20
2008 Tech
Do Not
Chase
Waterfalls
!IHNeHNs
Ed Word
Please send feedback and purple
pears to [email protected].
E
very few years, the stars align and magic
happens. No, I’m not talking about some sort
of holiday miracle. I’m talking about those years
when all the big hardware development cycles
sync up, and we get major releases from a whole
bunch of hardware vendors at the same time.
That’s why I’m particularly excited about this year’s
tech preview!
Starting on page 20 we’ve got the inside
scoop on all the gear you’re going to be lusting
after in ’08. With new kit just around the corner
from Nvidia, Intel, and AMD, it’s an awesome time
to be a power user. You can rest assured that the
fastest gear you can buy today will not be the
fastest gear you can buy six weeks from now.
At the time of this writing, I don’t know who’s
going to end up shipping the fastest videocard or
CPU, and I won’t know until the hardware hits the
Lab. The Maximum PC staff can make educated
guesses based on architectural design and
speeds and feeds, but we really won’t know how
hardware dominance will shake out until the metal
meets the road.
The inevitable question is, Should I upgrade
now or wait for the new gear?
That’s what everyone wants to know—and the
answer is always the same: It doesn’t matter whathardware is coming, what’s out now, or even
what brand of hardware you prefer, the time to
upgrade is the moment your rig is no longer fast
enough for you. When your rig is too slow to play
the games you want to play, when your videos
take too long to encode, when you’re generally
unhappy with your rig’s performance, that’s the
right time to upgrade.
Here’s the thing: Unless you just bought top-
of-the-line hardware two weeks ago, you can
always use a little more juice under the hood. If
you’re running an 18- or even 36-month-old rig,
even midrange hardware in stores today will be
faster than what’s running in your rig. And there are
big benefi ts to upgrading just before next-gen gear
goes to market. You pay less for “current-gen”
parts, and this hardware will typically overclock a
helluva lot better than earlier parts off the same
production lines.
The moral of this story is simple: It’s fun to
read about what’s coming next, but don’t get hung
up waiting for it. There’s always something bigger,
better, and faster around the corner. If you always
wait for the next big thing, you’ll just keep running
the same old, same old.Features
MAXIMUMPC Holiday / 07
46
Gifts for
Geeks!
Please your geek this
holiday season with the
coolest gadgets around!HOLIDAY 2007 MAXIMUMPC
46
Please your geek this
holiday season with the58
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