New PC - Waiting for Nehalem
 

Hi, what do people think about the upcoming intel cpu "Nehalem" which will be available with 8 cores on it?

My PC is due an upgrade - is it worth waiting till H2 of 2008 ?

Well right now is a really good time to buy. Videocards, RAM, and CPUs are all really low in price for how much power you get. When the new cores come out next year they will definitely be more powerful but they're also gonna cost more. It's not a bad idea to ugprade right now at all because the price to performance ratio of PC parts is REALLY high currently.

I don't know if Nehalem will be a good bet up front, especially since it a new architecture completely. If you are looking for an upgrade, you can wait far less time and get a Penryn chip. It's based on the 45nm process, and has up to 30% better power efficiency than current Core chips. It's also LGA775, which Nehalem may not be, saving you a mainboard upgrade as well.

If you go Penryn and decide in a year or so that Nehalem is a good way to go, wait another year or so for the 32nm die version of it named Westmere. Then Nehalem will be stable as an architecture, and Westmere will make it faster and/or better with power consumption. On the same not, stay away from Gesher until it's proven. I usually wait until the derivative chips come out... safer that way.

My upgrade will be pretty much a complete system. I'm currently running on a dual p3/1000 box (albeit heavily loaded). I'll be getting pretty much new everything.