ATX still the norm?

[Erich Kohl]

Question:

I am someone who is considering upgrading the individual components of
my Athlon system in the "near" future (a year or two) instead of
buying a whole new system from scratch. Is the ATX case still the
most popular case style, and are parts still being sold for it
(motherboards, power supplies, etc.)?

The reason I ask is because I originally bought my system about four
years ago, and I could have sworn there was some talk about a new case
standard emerging since then.

Thank you in advance for any help.

 

[kony]

Question:

I am someone who is considering upgrading the individual components of
my Athlon system in the "near" future (a year or two) instead of
buying a whole new system from scratch. Is the ATX case still the
most popular case style, and are parts still being sold for it
(motherboards, power supplies, etc.)?

Yes, for an upgrader ATX is still the most popular. OEMs
such as Dell are selling a lot of BTX but I don't know the
percentage (maybe all at this point?).

The reason I ask is because I originally bought my system about four
years ago, and I could have sworn there was some talk about a new case
standard emerging since then.

Yes, BTX but the industry has mostly rejected it for
compatibility reasons. An OEM can take a different
perspective as they were already only needing compatibility
with what they choose to integrate, the case and motherboard
combo in particular.

In a year or two you should have no problem finding ATX
power supply. I would expect more BTX motherboards 2 years
from now (than today) but not necessarily that they've taken
over the market yet. AMD skt. M2 can be had in ATX now,
and should be transitioning to smaller process size next
year, still M2 socket and ATX. The further into the future,
the more difficult to predict what will happen.

The best advice is to periodically check on the availability
of the parts you are considering, and if you see ATX market
drying up, don't wait till only the higher cost vendors have
stock remaining. I don't think that will be a problem
within 2 years though, but a better question might then be
whether going to BTX offered other benefits, enough to get a
BTX case instead... especially since your current system
might not be new anymore but might still be quite useful for
"something" two years from now, it could be cost effective
to keep that system somewhat whole only moving certain parts
to another system even if the other (new) system is still
ATX. It's also nice to have (at least) one whole working
system to use while you set up and test a new build, instead
of trying to move everything in one go and possibly ending
up with some issues but no system to use to research the
problems... but then for all I know you might have a laptop
or 20 other systems too.

 

[DaveW]

ATX is still the current industry standard.

 

[Erich Kohl]

ATX is still the current industry standard.

Thank you both for your advice.

Yes, many questions abound. I have a 1.0 GHz Athlon system with 512
MB of RAM and a decent (but not high end) GeForce graphics card. My
system is perfectly adequate right now for my needs, but when and if I
upgrade to Vista when it comes out, I might need some extra
horsepower. My other components are fine (DVD drive, CD burner,
monitor, etc.). I just figured that upgrading they key parts would be
more feasible than buying a whole new computer. Of course, it would
be nice to put THIS machine in the living room, and then have a brand
new system as my main machine here in my office/bedroom.

But Windows XP runs fine on my current setup. Oh, Microsoft -- why oh
why must you insist that we relegate our current machines to the trash
bin when you release a new OS?

 

[GT]

Thank you both for your advice.

Yes, many questions abound. I have a 1.0 GHz Athlon system with 512
MB of RAM and a decent (but not high end) GeForce graphics card. My
system is perfectly adequate right now for my needs, but when and if I
upgrade to Vista when it comes out, I might need some extra
horsepower. My other components are fine (DVD drive, CD burner,
monitor, etc.). I just figured that upgrading they key parts would be
more feasible than buying a whole new computer. Of course, it would
be nice to put THIS machine in the living room, and then have a brand
new system as my main machine here in my office/bedroom.

But Windows XP runs fine on my current setup. Oh, Microsoft -- why oh
why must you insist that we relegate our current machines to the trash
bin when you release a new OS?

But if it works and does everything you need, just keep the one you have -
why not take the money you were going to spend and save it away, a little at
a time and build a new PC when Vista comes out - you might not even need
one. You could investigate your motherboard and see what the fasted
processor it can take and look on eBay. Stick another 512MB Ram in there and
possibly a GFX card upgrade, possibly even all for under £120 ??

The future requirement for living room PCs will be HDTV and your current PC
won't be able to cope (to decode HDTV needs at least an athlon 3000+ ish).

 

[kony]

Thank you both for your advice.

Yes, many questions abound. I have a 1.0 GHz Athlon system with 512
MB of RAM and a decent (but not high end) GeForce graphics card.

You will likely need a new power supply if upgrading all the
major bits, new board/CPU/video, unless your present has an
atypically high 12V current rating and your replacement
video isn't very power hungry.

My
system is perfectly adequate right now for my needs, but when and if I
upgrade to Vista when it comes out, I might need some extra
horsepower.

Do you feel compelled to upgrade to Vista? Given a choice
I'd upgrade the system and stick with XP, before I'd upgrade
to Vista and (upgrade same system moderately or even replace
with the newer system). Vista will have bugs, learning
curve, and suck performance out of any box. A new system
right now would seem reasonably faster to you, but if you
wanted to do it when vista comes out, you might be
essentially standing still performance-wise, unless you have
particular tasks that you know will benefit (but none
mentioned so it's an unknown variable... I presumed you
didn't have very demanding tasks else the system upgrade for
performance reasons would have already been more important
an issue pre-Vista).

My other components are fine (DVD drive, CD burner,
monitor, etc.). I just figured that upgrading they key parts would be
more feasible than buying a whole new computer. Of course, it would
be nice to put THIS machine in the living room, and then have a brand
new system as my main machine here in my office/bedroom.

Keep in mind, Vista isn't here yet, by that time you may
have your optical drives wearing out or simply getting too
dusty for best operation, and if your hard drive is same age
as rest of system, it's expected lifespan may be about up.
If your uses aren't demanding, a new hard drive might be the
best performance boost right now.

But Windows XP runs fine on my current setup. Oh, Microsoft -- why oh
why must you insist that we relegate our current machines to the trash
bin when you release a new OS?

Well they do like to sell license to OEMs for bundling with
new systems. Unless someone puts a gun to your head though,
I don't know if it's really so important to move to Vista.
What is it your present system can't do, that you hoped to
gain? It might be premature to presume Vista will be more
useful for common tasks, but perhaps more limiting if it's
DRMed so much the same old things don't work as they did.

 

[Erich Kohl]

Do you feel compelled to upgrade to Vista? Given a choice
I'd upgrade the system and stick with XP, before I'd upgrade
to Vista

I feel (somewhat) excited about Vista, but in my view it's not like
the upgrade from Win 3.11 to 95. I'm going to use my current system
with XP until it absolutely dies. I'd like to see what the shipping
version of Vista actually looks like (visually and feature-wise)
first, and also how it plays out in the marketplace with users and
their initial experiences with it.

 

[kony]

I feel (somewhat) excited about Vista, but in my view it's not like
the upgrade from Win 3.11 to 95. I'm going to use my current system
with XP until it absolutely dies. I'd like to see what the shipping
version of Vista actually looks like (visually and feature-wise)
first, and also how it plays out in the marketplace with users and
their initial experiences with it.

I think "toy". I am compelled to see and play, but for
mission critical or main-use systems, Vista will want until
at least the first service pack. I still prefer Win2k to XP
though, some will have a more "if it's the newst it MUST be
the best", mindset.

To me, XP adds nothing but bloat, I already had software and
procedures that exceeded any benefit XP would provide. XP
just uses more memory to do the same jobs to me... and I
have XP based systems, which basically just use about 30MB
more memory for the (negligable difference) exact same
tasks. I have never came across a scenario where I "needed"
XP for anything that 2K wouldn't do. Then again, I always
avoid Media Player's latest version and codec, and why
wouldn't everyone? It serves no purpose to encode to
something most people can't play.

 

[Erich Kohl]

I think "toy". I am compelled to see and play, but for
mission critical or main-use systems, Vista will want until
at least the first service pack. I still prefer Win2k to XP
though, some will have a more "if it's the newst it MUST be
the best", mindset.

To me, XP adds nothing but bloat, I already had software and
procedures that exceeded any benefit XP would provide. XP
just uses more memory to do the same jobs to me... and I
have XP based systems, which basically just use about 30MB
more memory for the (negligable difference) exact same
tasks. I have never came across a scenario where I "needed"
XP for anything that 2K wouldn't do. Then again, I always
avoid Media Player's latest version and codec, and why
wouldn't everyone? It serves no purpose to encode to
something most people can't play.

Vista is going to bring bloat to new heights -- my understanding is
that it's going to be distributed on DVDs!

As far as XP though, I switched to that OS from Win 98, which feels
like a genuine improvement to me. 98 was unstable and XP has a better
UI (in my opinion). But I understand your point about Win 2K -- I've
heard many people say they are still happy with it.

Chicken and egg . . . new software prompts better hardware, better
hardware entices more powerful software. I wonder which came first?