New System

Your right, I'm over-analysing the situation. I'm so afraid of making the wrong decision. Truth is, I can't really go wrong. I'm gonna calm down, take a look at the market, and re-evaluate the situation every week.
One day I might just hit that "Checkout" button and that'll be it untill I go and say "ooh, I need me an X2."

Its a good start, because that's exactly what it is, a start. Rome wasn't built in a day, I certainly am in no rush.

I took a glance at some of the processors that may be within my price range in the coming weeks. The San Diego core 3700+ and 4000+ are within reach of they will drop significantly with the coming processors. The FX-55, FX-57 San Diego core processors are still at $800+. These do no seem feasible as their price difference does not yet match the performance gain.

Do you think the added L2 cache and the higher clock speeds will benefit me and keep me from being as CPU Limited on certain video games?

If I am precluded from the ability to play such games without purchasing some $800 processor, than I think I would be better off just not playing them. At least until I do my first upgrade (which would most likely for an X2).

If I build a solid system with a good base of memory, video capabilities and newest architecture I am sure I will have a nominal ability to play the most demanding video games on the market to date. Besides, there more than just video games for which I need a computer for, most of which will benefit most from the use of SATAII, PCI-E, SLI, and the 90nm processor architectures.

I am a large critic of the cache hype that has hit the market lately. From my computer engineering background, the use of massive amounts of cache will only lead to problems down the SLC of these processors. However I am pleased with the current AMD roadmaps which shows a deviation from massive on-die cache to bettering thermoelectric response and the move into multi-core, multi-threading capabilities which will be the future of processing at least until nanotechnology takes over.

With your setup you will be able to play any game you want. My PC has lesser hardware than yours and I can play new games although not at the highest setting but still decent enough to enjoy the game. Half Life 2 played quite well on my machine so don't fret.

Your most likely right. I still might wait a little bit to see if I cannot grab a San Diego core at the very least. Also, the new GeForce video cards came out and even a lesser version of the 7800 core would be better than the 6800, however that just might lower the 6800Ultra to some nicer pricing.

However, that depends on what's released. If they release like a 7600GT and it outperforms all of the 6series but with a friendlier price tag than the 7800., I might grab one of them.

If I switch around some pricing abilities and maybe if I get my hands on some more cash, I'll go for a full 4GB of memory.

And the rest is just waiting on Seagate to release the SataII w/ NCQ drives. They have a 500GB, but that might be too much. I'd be better off grabbing two 250GB's and throwing them in Raid 0.

It would be christmas in july if the stupid CD/DVD drive makers would also start throwing out Sata150 or SataII drives as well. Preferably ones with SPDIF outputs on the back. I don't care about what the bottle neck in the drives are, its more about connectivity. I really don't want to spend 3 large and have a UDMA2 device in my computer. That's kind of worthless. .

Uuuh, i thought the Vapochill LS was in there to max the 3000+ out. My old winchester 3000+ has been at 2.6Ghz for rather a long time and it works fine. All be it its not the bottleneck my 6600GT and 512mb of ram are. The FX57 is out in a couple of weeks, try looking on Ebay for an old Clawhammer FX55, they perform pretty well. Either that or a low end X2, 4200 Mancheter or 4400 Toledo. These are dual core and overclock pretty damned well from first results.

and of course when i buy my computer, a month later all of the new stuff comes out


dual 6800 ultras 256
fx55

now are replaced with the new stuff -- o well, i am still extremly happy with my computer and how it performs, except for my broken chipset fan on my A8N-SLI Deluxe

That's how computers work, you buy a bleeding edge system and by the time Fedex gets it to your door, its hopelessly outdated.

I try to get the stuff that was *just* replaced but using the latest motherboard with the latest sockets and etc... That makes sure the computer is at least upgradable for about a year or two.

well, when i had my old computer, i bought it about a year and a half ago, my father would not let me get 64 bit because "not many things are compatible with it" which is not true at all because it also supports 32 bit platforms as well -- tsk tsk tsk.