New standard

[Jiggy]

Guys with the new Athlons at £700, the mobo at £170 and now a new form factor that takes new mobo, its all going to COST:( link (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876).

[setoguro]

From a work point of view. That case the size of a mid tower would be ok but those smaller ones I think their going to be a pain in the butt. The small ones look cramped and hard to get your hands in to work on. I'd hate to have to move 3 things out of the way just to slap in a new card. I'm always changing and replacing something. I like those full towers that have enough room to sit inside to work on. But it looks like those full towers will become a thing of the past. The sleek miniature techie future is upon us.

[Budfred]

If they will make things easier to tinker with as they shrink them, it won't be so bad...

The basic design of the BTX standard looks good... Where did you get that the prices are going to be inflated???

[pave_spectre]

Does look like they may be slightly awkward to work in, particularly the micro and pico btx, though the standard cases look a bit similar to ATX mini towers.

[Jiggy]

Budfred,

I didnt, i was on about the new Athlon/mobo not meening to put the two together (Athlon/mobo,BTX).

[pave_spectre]

£700 for a proc does seem a bit steep. I would hate to see how much that would cost in OZ dollars.

On the BTX standard, its apparently smaller size would be useful in extremely cramped circumstances such as mine where the comp box takes up so much room I am forced to sit with my feet on the desk instead of under it.

[Jiggy]

The smaller two boxes look like 486 units but with better workings.

[Rick]

I don’t see any problem with the new standard
except for those of us who prefer to do our own upgrades.

Like the previous changes from XT, AT and ATX
We will simply have to replace our old cases and Move up

I don’t care for the extra cost of replacing all my AGP cards
But by the time I replace them all the New PCI express should have most of the bugs removed

I do however disagree with the removal of legacy hardware
NO LPT :( No Floppy :( no PS/2 :(
How Long before we see the serial ports removed ?


There are the extra costs
Video, pointing devices , printers/plotters, external com devices :(

[Jiggy]

Rick,

But the upgrade is the hole thing not just one card(s), you buy a new mobo you need case, graphics, the works, ok by time all/most the bugs in PCI express are sorted it will be in its second make, prices will lower a bit but still could cost the average home builder a pritty penny.

So will the cd-rom go over to serial ATA?

[Rick]

Well by the time I upgrade the CD-Rom will go the way of the ZIP drive :)

as for the rest.
It is the same thing we had to do in the past.
M/B, CPU, Memnory, Video and case

mono to cga to ega to vga to vesa l/b to pci to agp and now to pci express

When Will end? "never"

The first upgrade will be the killer $$ wise

[pave_spectre]

I cant see there being much point in CD-ROMS switching to the serial interface except perhaps for the space saving of the smaller cable. Current CD-ROMs are already pretty close to the destructive limit on CDs so there probably wouldnt be a great deal of increase in transfer rate.

[Budfred]

Blue Laser is supposed to be coming out any time now, with 2 competing standards of course, so I suspect that a DVD +/- RW will be the standard drive by then and the Blue Laser will be like the DVD is now. The SATA will probably be more meaningful with those technologies than it is with the CD....

[Jiggy]

Budfred,

Whats Blue Laser?

[Budfred]

It is supposed to be the next generation for optical drives. It is supposed to hold substantially more on the same size disk as the CD and DVD. Here is an article about it.... Blu-ray... (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,104570,00.asp)

[pave_spectre]

The fact that there seems to be three competing formats for the blue-laser market wont help the speed at which the technology gets adopted very much.