The reason i upgrade was because (i)felt it was time. My first built system was an AMD Athlon 64 4000+, Asus A8n-Sli motherboard, 2G's corsair XMS ram, 2 6600GT OC'd video card. i played CS, FarCry, WoW. In about a year or so, i upgraded my video cards to 8600GT, and wanted to try more games like Fear, Crysis, Bioshock. The newer games did take a lot more out of my CPU & GPU. When i increased picture quality in WoW-WotLK, the game actually came to an halt. I had to restart WoW, lowered my video setting and the game was fine. The other games like Fear, and Bioshock was ok, it was playable for me. I can't remember the frame rates i get when playing Crysis, but it was still playable. it's definitely not as sexy as other latest and greatest PC's. If i were to check emails, browse internet, umm what else. Then my old Pentium 4/Dell will do just fine.
I now have new Core i7 system and i'm loving it. But before upgrading to Core i7, my original plan was to get Q6600, get a decent motherboard like 790i, and get the lastest and greatest, bang for the buck video card. To compare and i7 system, to an 775 system cost wise(CPU & Motherboard). it wasn't too far off. i knew the i7 was on it's way, so... i wait for 3 months and bought Core i7 system. Reason: i'm hoping or i like to think that i will get the most out of it because i have purchase new technology. I spent only $250.00 for (GTX260 55nm, 216) because i know this card will handle most games for now and when new video cards come out, i can upgrade again, and again, and again.
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Silverstone TJ-07 |Core i7 2.66 (Stock)/CM V8 going to try Thermalright Ultra 120 Black, P&P Noctua Fan|Asus Rampage Ex II X58|CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600|EVGA 896-P3-1258-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 SSC Edition|WD Raptor 300|PC & Cooling 750