The Ultimate Dream Computer

tripplite
With the antiquated parts list it sounds like the "bumble bee" build needs to catch up with the times. Instead of keeping up, it never got up.

I'm not putting down the FX-60 system, they were nice in their time. It's just that the time has past and the CPU is no longer a good competitor for Intel's C2D technology. AMD has finally brought out the Phenom processors to do battle with Intel. Intel is supposed to be bringing out the Penryn shortly. Those are already making the pre-release test rounds. If Intel can keep the pricing down, they'll blow AMD out of the water once again. I hope AMD has more up their sleeve besides Phenom.

Maybe, but AMD is definitely not a poor little company either. AMD is a large international company with a lot of resources. It's more a matter of AMD dropping the ball than lacking the resources. AMD's management sat around and laughed at Intel until Intel lowered the boom on them. AMD thought Intel couldn't match hypertransport. Given it's good memory management technology, but Intel continues to work around it. I remember how critical AMD was of Intel just before the C2D release. AMD was pretty condescending and AMD fans were rooting for Intel to fail.

@GTR35
Has anyone brought out enough DirectX 10 games and software to justify those expensive GPUs yet?

 

@Waymon3X6 because i can have 4 HD3850...HD3850 is a single slot card while HD3870 is a double slot...

@PacMan777 not a lot tho...but they're getting there...

 

Problem is, by the time they get there with the programming, there will be newer and likely better GPUs. That's the problem with leading edge tech. By the time they get the software to match the hardware, there's often newer and better hardware. Sort of a vicious circle.

Intel and AMD are both working on incorporating graphics into the CPU. That should work better all around.

 

GTR: no offense, but four HD3850s will make a very slow system in the majority of games. Crossfire is ass unless there's one specific game it supports that you play a lot of, and since you went with HD3850s, the games that don't work with it (i.e. most of them) will only run so-so compared to high end cards like the HD3870 and the 8800GT/GTX. Buy an HD3870, but keep it singular, it'll perform well, and you'll save a fortune.
Since it's your dream system you kind of undersold yourself on the hard drives didn't you? Now that there are 1TB drives out, why not get six of those? This is a dream build is it not?
Pacman: They sort of have, but Directx10 doesn't support Anti-Aliasing. At all. Not a sausage. So consequently I refuse to use it, and stick with XP and DX9 for games. I'll wait until DX10.1 comes out thanks very much!

 

Sam
I was going by what the top GPUs are supposed to use, not what you've decided to run on your system. That's why most 32 bit XP systems with 256MB GPUs running DirectX 9 can do about as well or better than systems using the top GPUs with most of the current games available (similar platforms of course). A simple look at the comparisons done by sites like Tomshardware, Anandtech, and PC world will show the numbers. Of course when more games are made for DirectX 10 the advantage should shift.

Unless you built with one of the newer GPUs meant for DirectX 10, then your older version of DirectX makes sense. A person shouldn't be trying to use DirectX 10 with a GPU that it wasn't intended for with few games and programming available.

 

Even if I owned a DX10 card, right now I'd stick with XP, no question. Admittedly, a lot of that is based on the fact that I don't want to use Vista, but even so, I think a lack of Anti-Aliasing is a terrible oversight on DX10's part.

 

Sam
By the time R&D gets things sorted out there will be newer GPUs.

 

I should hope so, I'll be waiting!

 

does the ram affect the performance?...is it a waste having 1GB ram on a 8800GTS?

 

It's a waste of money owning an 8800GTS. The GT is a lot faster and much cheaper. But yes, you should have at least 1.5GB, preferably 2GB or more to make good use of a GPU that powerful.

 

it's a typo...i mean 8600GTS 1GB ram...cause they started making it...

 

Yes, it's a complete waste of time. The 8600GTS isn't anywhere near fast enough to make use of that much RAM.

 

thought so...only really high end cards needs that much of ram...

 

I'm dubious whether any card needs more than 768MB of RAM at present. The 1GB on the HD2900XT is simply so advantageous because it's high speed GDDR4.

 

yeah tru...

oh whats the point of having multi monitors?...can you play games on one monitor and surf the web on the other?...

 

Not really, you can however monitor your IMs and emails with the second screen, so you don't miss anything important while gaming. Some games like Supreme Commander support multiple screens so you can use both for it.

 

but can you doing anything on the second screen?...like having two keyboards?

 

I'm not sure. Not that I know of, but perhaps, I hadn't considered that idea.

 

ok...someone should do that...it'll be interesting...playing games while talking to family overseas thru internet...awesomeness

 

i have a few mates that do that. they play games on one, and MSN on the other.