Too many options

[hercules71185]

I'm about to completely rebuild my beast. I have been working A LOT and haven't really been on my comp much. But, due to my promotion I can finally have a life again. So, I'm making a gaming rig to last me a bit. I do other things like video and photo editing and multi-task. An example of what I'm expecting. To be able to listen to music, download (legal, lol) movies via utorrent. And playing a game. So does this amount of tasking make the dual cores flaw? Or does it still not hurt it?

My Concept Rig.
Corsair 750w
Either ATi hd 4870 or Gtx 260 maybe the 280 if it really is that much better.
E8500 or Q6700 or Q9400
And this Mobo looks good so is it? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128358
All my other components are on my current setup.

My main thing is. I want to be able to play games for a while without rebuilding again. This is my 4th build in 3 years. From what I hear the Quads are "future proof" But, by the time they are utilized for gaming they will have an entire new CPU market. Or am I wrong? I guess what I'm looking for from you all is. For a pc to last a couple years would a gtx 260 then add an sli later be better with a quad or dual. Or is the HD4870 more powerful, and have the driver flaws that ATi has always had. Like I said I've been out of the market for a few months and a few things changed.

Thanks in advance.

[kappage]

Hey man long time no see, hows it all going anyway?
My older brother has the 4870 X2 and he says that it is great in everything apart from anygame that EA own.. He beleives that EA is sucking up to Nvidia by mainly supporting for there cards, so it would probably be best to go with the 269GTX over the 4870..

[Skippman]

I have a 4870 and have had no problems at all that were ATI's fault. Red Alert 3 had a problem with my drivers but ATI had just released new ones the day before RA3 came out and I'd not seen that. Installed them, no more problems.

[DMB2000uk]

How much are you looking to spend overall?

And yeah, that motherboard is quite a good one.

Dan

[hercules71185]

a limit? ... I guess it's more or less how much I'm getting for my dollar. Like I wouldn't want to spend 100 bucks more for a video card that only gets 3 fps more. And then I can sli later if it gives me problems for at the rate of price dropping like 150 to double my frame rate.
Theoretically say a grand. And does anyone think that intel is going to change their socket again? I hate when they do that because it limits your upgrades too much. Thanks for the input so far tho. I have a good sound card, case, gauges, dvd burner, memory card reader, fan controller. So that doesn't have to be added into the total.

[martini161]

you mean after i7?

[DMB2000uk]

They are changing it as of tomorrow with the official retail release of core i7 on socket 1336.

But to get that requires ddr3 which is a fair bit more expensive than ddr2.

Though, some site (can't remember which at this point) did a comparison of price/performance of quite a few systems, and found that when the core i7 920 CPU was overclocked, it came out the winner in price/performance terms, so although the initial outlay is slightly more, it was a lot faster in most things.

Dan

[Zertz]

And does anyone think that intel is going to change their socket again?

Tomorrow?

[hercules71185]

haha ironic. I didn't read up on that till after I posted this. Hurting...But, yea, do you think they will be able to get some more power out of the 775 in a few years or just discontinue it?

[martini161]

no, there are going to be more 775 chips coming out

[hercules71185]

So what would I be looking at for a decent mobo combo for the i7? I can wait a month or so but, I'm getting impatient as it is haha. But, if I slack on this I will regret it in a bit. We know prices will drop once it's released and more competition starts. But, for decent ram, mobo and cpu with a GPU, and PSU.. Can it be under say... 1300?

[hercules71185]

What about the processor? How many FPS would I sacrifice for going from dual to quad. Or do you think the i7 quad will compete with the e8500 overclocked to 4.0....

[hercules71185]

*Tilt*

[Skippman]

You shouldn't sacrafice any FPS by going to a quad core. I imagine in the future many games are going to start wanting quad cores to handle physics processing on non-Physx enabled systems. If I were buying a new chip right now, I'd go quad core. There's no reason NOT to.

[vicaphit]

I was a little perterbed when I got my Q6600 and realized that for gaming I should have gone with the E8400, but that was in April, and games are being released now that utilize all 4 cores of the Quad, so I am happy with my decision.

[hercules71185]

So my last thing before I make my choice and thanks for the input about the quads being utilized.

Either the q9550 and the gtx 280
or the intel i7 920 with the gtx 260...

[DMB2000uk]

Q9550 and 280GTX combo gets my vote.

The core i7 does sound appealing, but with people saying that LGA775 is going to be supported for at least the next couple of years, I presume that means that there will be a few more LGA775 CPU's that you can upgrade to (and even if you can't the Q9950 is pretty damn fast when you overclock it some).

So the GPU will give you the biggest difference in performance, and it makes sense to go with the fastest you can at this point.

Dan

[martini161]

i7 gets my vote. even though lga 775 will be suported for maybe another year or two 1336 is going to be supported even longer

[DMB2000uk]

But what about the gaming performance?

Bear in mind he said he wasn't going to upgrade it for a good while.

Dan

[martini161]

Bear in mind he said he wasn't going to upgrade it for a good while.
Dan

exactly. so by the time he gets to upgraded lga 775 my already have been phased out.