Upgrading soon, should I wait until after the holidays?

Talked with my wife and for Christmas I'm going to be upgrading my computer and mine will be passed onto her. I was just wondering when's the best time to buy. Ever since I've gone out into the "real world" of working I've stopped following all the latest hardware trends. I was just wondering do prices usually dip a little before the holiday season in the hopes of increased sales, or do they usually stay constant until a little after the holiday season in the hopes of sticking it to the consumer? Or have prices been relatively predictable and only changing due to product lifecycles?

I'm going AMD64, and a new(er) vid card as I am a heavy gamer besides being a developer. Also, should what's the word with PCI Express vs AGP and which route should I take? Advice to the hardware price performance ratio would be appreciated.

Day After Thanksgiving at Best Buy, Frys, or any local major electronics super store. You can get the ads on Thanksgiving Day.

You can't yet get PCI express w/ amd, but its coming soon. That will be the platform of choice. If the chipsets are out after thanksgiving, that might be a good time, else places like newegg and pricewatch.com have low prices all the time, so its less important when you buy, and you can wait to get the features you're after. Downside is that currently only high end vid cards are available in pci express types, but that will change soon too.

Well the good news is I'm upgrading to high mid-high end . I'm leaning towards an AMD 64 3500 due to price compared to the other higher end AMD stuff. I am also partial to Abit so I'm waiting for their PCI Express mobo to come out. I'm hoping this rig will keep me from my upgrading bug for at least a year and a half so I'm not going to skimp on video. I don't think you can really go wrong with the high end ATI/Nvidia stuff. There doesn't seem to be a huge lead for either company (I'm not a huge benchmark freak and as long as I'm running in 32 bit with all details on at above 1024x768 I'm a happy camper) and although usually Nvidia has had a better track record with drivers I can't really complain about my current Radeon 9800pro.

If you see anything you'd recommend against/for please let me know. I'm patient enough to wait until after the holiday season, but if you know of some really promising mobos I'm open.

As always, thanks for the input.
-b

isnt that, like, black friday or whatever? yeah, don't go shopping then, people get wrecked on those days in retail stores.

i'd suggest buying online, they've got good deals all year round at newegg and the likes

The nVidea 6800GT would be my "reasonable" recommendation for a new video card, its very fast and $150 cheaper than the best ati and nVidia offerings. I like abit a lot too, so thats a good mobo option when their pci express offerings are available. Sounds like you'll have a very fast setup.

I work at Circuit City, sad for me, good for consumers. Trust me, the day after thanksgiving we are practically giving away systems. For instance, one we have on sale right now (keep this hush hush) for 1k, will only be 300 dollars. Go get em!

Thanks for the heads up, I'm more of a build my own PC guy than prebuilt system purchaser though. And I really don't want to put up with post thanksgiving/biggest shopping day of the year crowds.

Still, what are specs on that machine? It may be up the alley of my brother in law.

Thanks seack79!! Like bcyde, I might be interested, but can you give us any guidance on the specs? Can you at least tell us what processor? Thanks!!

I just looked at the current CC ad but I don't see the one you say is on sale for 1k. I see one for $1099.99. This one has the same processor as the one at BB but better memory and 20gb more HD, BUT it has a smaller screen (14 v 15).

Forgot to ask you seack79, is there a MIR?? or several? To sell it for $300 (that wasn't a typo??) there almost has to be.

Someone else on another board says they talked to another CC employee who told them (allegedly) which one will be on BF sale. That person then went and found it on CC website and it meets the guideline seack79 has provided about it selling now for 1k. If they are correct, model is Compaq Presario Notebook PC (2210US).

I did some shopping the past two black Fridays and got some really good deals. I had to park literally in the woods behind my local BestBuy as the crowds were really bad and there was no parking spots left. Almost everything has a mail in rebate. At least one rebate if not two. I usually pick up a couple hundred CD-Rs to last me the year. If you can buy online for the same price, the shipping charges (if any) are worth it! Look for cheap hard drives and hopefully, some cheaper RAM.

www.bf2005.net has what is going to be on sale this year.