[garyhope]

Thanks for posting this. I’m currently in the looking and thinking about doing a new build stage.

I’m wondering what is the best future proof CPU that will still be worthwhile 2 or 3 years down the road. Does that mean an i7 only? An i7 system is only a few hundred dollars (pennies per day over 2 or 3 years) more than a good AMD AM3 quad core right now, but what will hold up the best over a few years?

This would be mostly for multi monitor financial trading and just surfing the net. I’m not a gamer.

Opinions please.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

For what you’re doing, a Core2 Duo is fine; get as much RAM as you can, a decent 2 or 4 monitor video card with at least 256 MB of on-board RAM, and go with a high speed HDD instead.

I do a lot of computational work (finite element analysis) and for number crunching I prefer more RAM; machines seem to be peppier with buckets of RAM laying around, better than significantly upgrading the CPU horsepower. The CPU is often NOT the bottleneck; it’s the processors and sandbox (HDD and RAM) around the CPU that is the limiter.

[Rational Thought]

With the prices of CPU’s, I wouldn't worry so much about future proof. A great example is the Sempron 140, which retails for around $33.00. The cpu is a dual core Regor with one of the cores locked. Most boards with a 710 or 750 SouthBridge (with ACC) are capable of unlocking the 2nd core of most of these Semprons. From there, the chip can easily be overclocked to 3.2Ghz (I'm running one @ 3.4ghz), giving you screaming fast performance for just a few dollars. And since the cpu is a 45 W chip, it runs very cool. Here's a link explaining this:

http://www.techpowerup.com/101389/Sempron_140_Unlocks_to_Athlon_II_X2.html

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Future proofing a CPU in the recent past is not a smart thing to try...

IMHO using AMD with the AM2 socket has been a good move....

Intel has changed the socket quite a bit...

If starting right now the AM3 socket would seem to have some lifetime left.... Everyone always looks at the magazines benchmarks which always seem to do the tests that really only apple to Gamers...and then give recommendations that cost way more than needs to be spent.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This would be mostly for multi monitor financial trading

Does anyone ever do a Benchmark with that specific application?

[Tribune7]

I’m wondering what is the best future proof CPU that will still be worthwhile 2 or 3 years down the road.

If Linux is the flavor that's your choice, why worry about it? You'll probably have an version available that is more functional than the ones out now and still work fine with whatever modern CPU you choose. Regardless the ones available now won't be obsolete.

If 7 is you choice do you really expect MSFT to have an new OS 2 or 3 years from now? :-)

[kitchen]

... what will hold up the best over a few years?

I read a few years back that, for every 10 degrees you lower the CPU temperature, you double its life. So, lap the hell out of your heat sink and don't skimp on fans.

Granted, my 3 work computers loaf along, but I've never seen the CPU temperature above 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Then again, one of them sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's running.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Rather than the CPU and Future proofing....you might want to add the USB3 and SATA 6 G coming devices into the equation....

Here is the AMD Chipset announcement that delivers on the new devices....

AMD 890GX SB850 Chipset Debut: Phenom II X6 Ready

And one board from ASUS:

ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890GX HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

[dangerdoc]

The only CPU bound activity I have is converting HD video from MPEG2 to MPEG4.

With the i7, it is now fast enough that I can finish a project in one evening. Three years from now I’ll be drooling over the new hardware but the i7 has given me enough speed that I can live without an upgrade.

I basically wore out the cooling fans on two dual core pentium computers that I had running day and night crunching video. The older dual core computer would require over 24 hours of computing time for one project.

Of course I say that now but when next year’s systems come out all bets are off.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Review of the MoBo chipset :

Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 Motherboard Review: AMD's 890GX Chipset Makes Its Debut

Gigabyte may have a board out too ...I think.

[Poser]

An I3 will do the job. Spend your money on video cards. Tom’s Hardware ranks the I7 and I5 as pretty similar for gaming.

Tom’s Hardware (dot com) has some good recent build-off data for several different price levels.