Building a new pc, must last me atleast 4 yrs with minimal upgrades

H

Homer

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 28, 2005
Messages
481
Like I said in the title. Basically, I need to build an awesome gaming pc that will last me 4 years with the least amount of upgrades I would need. I have it kind of figured out. The pc has to be under 3000, and I already have a main hard drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, so I dont need new ones of those. Heres what I'm looking at:

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (san diego)
Corsair PC-3200 (2-2-2-5) 2x512
2 x BFG 6800 Ultra ( either 256 mb or 512, cant decide, what would you pick?)
Asus A8N SLI deluxe
Western Digital 74gb raptor


What are opinions on this setup? I am debating whether I should wait for the 7800s to come out. Any idea on when they will be out and how much cash they will cost?



EDIT: Forgot to mention Power supply. Plan on getting the PC Power and Cooling 510 SLI
 
Go with the 256MB on the cards... 512MB right now is just throwing money away.
 
Well, I know benches dont show much of a difference now, but I'm trying to plan long term here. Although, I dont know its worth an extra 300 on each card. Any one have info on the 7800s?
 
Well, to try to see what games will be like in 4 years is really impossible. So sure, go for the 512MB's if you want. You've got $3,000 to spend... who the hell cares.
 
Sorcerxo said:
Go with the 256MB on the cards... 512MB right now is just throwing money away.
Click to expand...
What? Are you kidding?

I think i am the only one sometimes who uses any logic in my thought process.

Get the 512MB cards if you must now, But I would wait for the G70 / R520 cards.

Sure most games dont use 512MB of video memory, but that dosent mean they wont eventually. Since you want to wait 4 years before any kinda upgrade, you want to maximize the longitevity of your Machine. 512MB of video memory or more is the only way to go if you plan on sticking wiith the same video cards for 4 whole years...
 
Release date and price on the 7800s?

Thank you every one for help btw!
 
four years seems a really long time between upgrades.. you sure you want to go that long?
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
What? Are you kidding?

I think i am the only one sometimes who uses any logic in my thought process.

Get the 512MB cards if you must now, But I would wait for the G70 / R520 cards.

Sure most games dont use 512MB of video memory, but that dosent mean they wont eventually. Since you want to wait 4 years before any kinda upgrade, you want to maximize the longitevity of your Machine. 512MB of video memory or more is the only way to go if you plan on sticking wiith the same video cards for 4 whole years...
Click to expand...

Sorcerxo said:
Well, to try to see what games will be like in 4 years is really impossible. So sure, go for the 512MB's if you want.
Click to expand...

And, if you're going to wait on the 7800's, you wouldn't want to go SLi... most likey (I'm not sure, don't flame me) it'll take up two slots because of the cooling on the thing, but sources have said that it would beat a 6800U SLi set-up alone.

Although, if you were going to wait for something, I'd wait for the new ATi's card. I forgot what it's called but it's supposed to have 32 pipelines... so...
 
i would ditch the Corsair and go with some of the Patriot XBL memory......and maybe even 2GB instead of just 1GB. this stuff has been shown to overclock pretty damn well for not too high of a price. not that there's anything with Corsair, but this stuff has been shown to O/C better, which will pretty much be a necessity later on, say year 3 or 4, for you to get 4 years out of it. 1GB is pretty much the standard now, i bet in 4 years, 2 - 4GB will be standard.

with components available now, i'd do:

Asus A8N SLI Deluxe -- $175
Patriot XBL x2GB (512MB x4) -- $398
BFG Tech GeForce 6800 Ultra (256MB) x2 -- $1030
Western Digital 73GB Raptor -- $173
Athlon 64 4000+ (San Diego) -- $489

Total = $2265 + S&H

if you don't already have one, i'd get a DVD writer: Beige Pioneer DVR-109 -- $56 or Black Pioneer DVR-109 -- $47

Total = $2312 to $2321 + S&H

if the main hard drive you already have is a large drive, i would recommend getting a second Raptor drive and put them in RAID0 for the OS & installed programs, with the existing hard drive as a storage drive.

Total = $2265 to $2494 + S&H

and with dual GeForce 6800's, i'd definitely make sure to get a good power supply, like an Enermax EG701AX-VE 600w PSU -- $161.99

Total = $2265 to $2655.99 + S&H

then get whatever case you like, if you don't already have one
 
Yeah, four years is a long time. Cutting edge at the starting point will be marginal at the end.
 
guys, let's not forget about the PhysX chips that are coming out before too long....if his video performance doesn't quite cut it later on down the line, he could put one of those chips in to help
 
Thanks for all the help guys. What are physx? Ohhh forgot to say, this thing will also be water cooled. And again, this is trying to last 4 years with as minimal upgrades as possible, not absolutely no upgrades.
 
.... not quite catching on. Do you add it? or will it be implemented into video cards later?
 
it's a PCI card, with a PCI Express version coming out later. what it does is processes all the game physics instructions so that the main CPU/Vid Card doesn't have to, assuming the game you're playing was coded with PhysX instructions.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
What? Are you kidding?

I think i am the only one sometimes who uses any logic in my thought process.

Get the 512MB cards if you must now, But I would wait for the G70 / R520 cards.

Sure most games dont use 512MB of video memory, but that dosent mean they wont eventually. Since you want to wait 4 years before any kinda upgrade, you want to maximize the longitevity of your Machine. 512MB of video memory or more is the only way to go if you plan on sticking wiith the same video cards for 4 whole years...
Click to expand...

Show me a benchmark where these newer games that actually utilize a good portion of the 256 we are using now, actually run much better on the 9800 Pro 256 compared to the 9800 Pro 128.

Thats the problem with buying 512 now, even if the game can use the 512 on the card, by the time it is, the high end is now a 512 card that is almost twice the performance and fill rate of the previous generation. Since no matter how much memory you have it is still governed by how fast the GPU can read and write to it.
 
I like xXaNaXx's system, but I'd go with 2 sticks of 1Gb. The San Diego chip he recommends doesn't have issues with 4x512. But in four years time you might want 4Gb.

No matter what you buy now, it will be almost - but not quite - obsolete four years from now.
 
um, if you have 3k, why don't you just spend about $1500 now (more than enough to get a top of the line system since you already have a lot of stuff) and save the other 1500 for upgrades down the road? just seems more logical to me... top of the line current gen stuff will last you for next gen games, but not next next gen, which will be here in well under 4 years. (this would mean not going SLI, which is a downright brilliant choice in any case! edit- although, go with the SLI mobo if you want, on the off chance that SLI becomes the standard 3-4 years down the road... but 3-4 years down the road you'll want a new mobo anyway, as there'll be something far superior to nf4 out :p)
 
Here is what I would do. As often as I un-recommend waiting for new technology, I must this time, given your situation. You should wait and get:

Dual 7800 GTs (or whatever the new midrange card is)
Athlon64 X2 (Dual-Core Processor)
PPU (Physics Processing unit)

The dual 7800s ensures you can run the Unreal 3 engine at decent settings, and I think that future Doom-3-engine-based-games will need more graphics power as well. The PPU may be a waste for now, but I feel that in the future there will be a strong push from the game devs to incorporate it into more games.. The X2 processor, while not necessary, gets you incredible gaming performance while also getting you the smoothness in multi-tasking. Yes, given your situation, I would definetely wait for the above mentioned technologies.
 
Only thing is with the 7800s nvidia is only making the top of the line (the gtx series) operable with SLI...
 
Homer said:
Only thing is with the 7800s nvidia is only making the top of the line (the gtx series) operable with SLI...
Click to expand...
I'm not going to start a flame war, but I've never heard this. Do you have a link?
 
roger...


http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=2206

Nvidia G70 - GeForce 7800 GTX Specifications
a.. 0.11 micron process TSMC

b.. 430Mhz core / 1.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 memory

c.. 256-bit memory interface

d.. 38.4GB/s memory bandwidth

e.. 24 pixel pipelines

f.. 10.32 Billion Pixels Per Second Fill Rate

g.. 8 Vertex Pipes

h.. 860 Million vertices/second

i.. 400MHz RAMDACs

j.. NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 engine

k.. Intellisample 4.0 technology

l.. 64-bit FP texture filtering & blending

m.. NVIDIA SLI Ready (7800 GTX only) notice this one *******

n.. DX 9.0 / SM 3.0 & OpenGL 2.0 supported

o.. G70 comes with 3 models; GTX, GT and Standard

p.. Single Slot solution

q.. Single card requires min. 400W PSU with 12V rating of 26A

r.. SLI configuration requires min. 500W PSU with 12V rating of 34A

s.. Launch : 22nd of June

t..

u.. http://img279.echo.cx/img279/9568/coverimage1vs.jpg

v..

w.. http://img289.echo.cx/img289/5360/7800gtxpower0gs.jpg

* 0.11 micron process TSMC
* 430Mhz core / 1.4GHz 256MB GDDR3 memory
* 256-bit memory interface
* 38.4GB/s memory bandwidth
* 10.32Bps Fill Rate
* 860M vertices/second
* 24 pixels per clock
* 400MHz RAMDACs
* NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 engine
* Intellisample 4.0 technology
* 64-bit FP texture filtering & blending
* NVIDIA SLI Ready (7800 GTX only) ***************
* DX 9.0 / SM 3.0 & OpenGL 2.0 supported
* G70 comes with 3 models; GTX, GT and Standard
* Single card requires min. 400W PSU with 12V rating of 26A
* SLI configuration requires min. 500W PSU with 12V rating of 34A
* Launch : 22nd of June
 
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