I plan to spend $2750 usd on a new pc. Any suggestions of what would give the most bang for my buck around December? Plan to game, 3D cad, graphics edit, vista ultimate. Already have display.

Things I want..
All sata
4-8 GB ram
OC head room
Raid 5

Not sure..
SLI? (add card later for a boost?)
Physics card? (runs Havok physics too?)
AMD/Intel?
Dual/Quad core?
Dual cpu?

I say wait until October at the earliest, November preferably. Then we'll probably have answers to whether Ati's problems are driver related or not, if the physics cards are worth the insane sticker price and other conundrums.


Edit: That is, wait to ask that question of course.

I wouldnt go over 4GB on the ram
2GB is the sweet spot
and 4GB is slight overkill
and 8-16 is total over kill
not to mention ram isnt cheap
...I remember last oct when you couldnt get a 2GB pk DDR2-800 for under $300

quad-core be aware on whats going on with it, how optimzation and stuff plays into it
right now dual-core is king, intel core 2 duo

SLI ...
I think 1 8800GTX is enough for most people
but if you have the money, but new cards will come out, 8900GTX
so it depends
its better to leave room for upgrade ability

Get a Penryn or Phenom Quad Core in Q1 '07. Topics like this are sort of a waste of time, no one really knows where to spend your money in 7 months.

Well, I disagree w/ Zaltan ... posts like this aren't a waste of time, they're fun!

Might as well get a SLI mobo, you can always add the second card later.

Make sure your PSU is a good 'un, I'm a fan of PC Power and Cooling, but s1ugh34d has turned me on to silverstones as well (though he didn't know it.) Plenty of posts around here on what good PSUs have to offer.

Careful about the quad cores. Even the dual cores don't run the same, right now. I know folks w/ AMD duals that can't run certain games, but the games run fine on Intel duals. So ... you'll need lots of research on that up front before you buy in.

Also, 64-bit OS isn't good for all games either, despite what the marketing hype might tell you. And Vista might still have all the audio driver issues they're having right now ... kind of ridiculous it's been out for almost six months and they haven't fixed that yet.

RAID 5 will do you, but if you've got the cash, how 'bout a RAM drive for real speed?

From what I understand about Physics cards, there's a lot of that capability being built into the new GPUs by ATi and nVidia (GPGPUs) so that additional card might not be so good. But if you're looking to spend on performance tweaks, what about that gamer's NIC that prioritizes gaming packets over regular network traffic? I can't remember the name, but I'm sure someone here knows it.

ATi's current line (2900's) are price-pointed at the value market, instead of the extreme framerate guru, and compete nicely on that level. But with six months to go, there could be another line released that goes after nVidia's big guns.

Just a brain dump, can't think of anything else right now ...

-godling

My brain is still thinking socket-a, agp, sata-1. I'm out of touch with current and coming soon hardware, so I need a new baseline to start from.

I am considering a flash-ram drive. They kick ass in random read write seek time, but they still have slow sustained read write speed.

Godling, fun maybe, but not practical, which is what I expect Seyeklopz is looking for. I believe in a few more months we'll be able to make a good prediction of the right routes to go down regarding motherboards, ram and CPUs.

Wait for some more DDR3, P-35, Phenom and Penryn reviews benchmarks and leaks