IS this a good machine?

9600 GT 512MB
Duo E8400
with 4gb ddr2

Is it a good time to upgrade now? Will this be outdated soon? I dont want have to upgrade everything soon(i mean 2 years)?

Whats the best thing to buy for future upgrades? WIll ddr3 soon be mainstream?

 

Your parts are all good, but what exactly are you planning to do with your computer? 8800GT is still the best, besides 9800GX2, but you don't really need that unless you're really gaming a lot (with graphic intensive games like Crysis and whatnot).

For the time being, DDR2 is still a better choice than DDR3. It is much cheaper, and the motherboards for DDR3 are also pretty expensive. So far, the market for DDR3 has been for overclocking enthusiasts, who like the high bus speed of the RAM. Also, if you're using 4 GB of RAM, make sure that you have a 64-bit operating system that can allocate all of that RAM (or you can use Windows Server 2003), whatever suits your needs more. If it matters to you, you should look at the timings on the RAM as well. The lower, the better.

You made a pretty good choice of processor. It is very overclockable if you are planning to do that. Also, the 45nm technology makes it thinner and that means better heat dissipation.

 

If you have about $2000, I say wait for P45 coming out next month. Heck, in 15 days. It'll be the last socket 775 chipset and the manufacturers will pay more attention to it.

Nehalem will be out this fall. It's a whole new architecture. Won't fit s775. New mobo. New cpu. DDR3. Etc. However, the mobo may cost as much as $300-400. Plus the cpu price.

The question is what's your budget?