Help me! I'm out of the loop

[smp]

You can see by my post count that I used to spend a lot of time here
It's been a while and I'm 100% out of the hardware loop. I've been using a powerbook G4 for a while and just got a new Macbook Pro so I haven't built a system in too long.
Before you guys stone me, the macs are provided by work .. but yes, I do love them. I don't discriminate though, love my PCs too.

Anyway, there seem to be a lot of chipsets on the market these days and a lot of CPUs and and memory combinations. Truth be told, when I was spending all of my time here I was primarily building AMD based systems on VIA KT133a chipsets, then the AMD761 (remember that?), then Nforce2, my current system is an abit NF7-S based system. Old school by now I guess.

If you guys can provide a link or just fire off some of the combos that are popular these days that would be really helpful, I don't mind doing research but I need the AT crew to point me in the right direction first.
Ultimately, I'm toying with the idea of replacing my modded Xbox as media center because it chokes on HD content .. it had a good run though, over 2 years of continuous media center use, sigh.

 

[Pakman]

AMD64 or AMD64 X2 or Opterons for OCing... (socket 939)
NFORCE4 chipset
7900 series from Nvidia for X1900 from ATI

That seems to be what people are buying these days. I just bought parts myself..
Shuttle SN25P SFF (939 nforce 4 ultra)
AMD64 3700+ (san diego)
XFX 7900GT extreme
250gig Seagate HD SATA
2gigs OCZ PC3200 Platinum
NEC 16X DVD burner

Edit: Also bought the Dell 2005FPW 20.1" widescreen LCD for some wickedly awesome cinematic widescreen gaming!

 

[dBTelos]

Nforce is one of the more popular chipsets for PCI-E. AMD Athlon 64 and 64 X2 are kind of the base of the AMD consumer market. x2 being the duel core edition of the 64 reg. The FX by AMD is building upon the Athlon 64 with only one core. Opterons were built for the server market but have since made it to consumer workstations with, from what I here a great base for OCing and gaming like wise. DDR400 for AMD is still the majority of ram speed, while the lauch of the new AM2 socket by AMD is set for the end of May IIRC. This new socket will also bring on new processors, from highend to budget systems (x2 to sempron) while supporting DDR2 for faster RAM access. Although this may look like a major new release, from multiple articles here at AnandTech and some unreleased benchmarks, so far the new socket looks to have fallen short. Thats what the AMD processors are like.

 

[sleepykid]

sorry to say something off topic, but pakman, have you tried to see how well the dell works at native res. with max settings in FPS games with the 7900gt?

oh and smp, i'd strongly recommend you to get a widescreen screen if you're gonna be gaming. i have a 15" widesrceen notebook which i sometimes use to play NFS:MW and World of Warcraft, it looks awesome. So gonna get myself a viewsonic VX2025wm 20.1 inch monitor soon 8)

 

[smp]

Thanks, keep em coming guys

About the widescreen gaming .. I don't play games, I don't even play games on my xbox unless I have friends over.
But I will say that i played halflife 2 on my macbook running windows yesterday and I have to say .. wow, smooth! It was the best gaming experience I've had on a "mac".
I was just looking at the Dell 2007WFP, looks nice .. they don't post specs on Dell's (.ca) website.


edit: the 2005WFP is the same price .. but the 2007 is the new model. No specs for it though!
I'm spoiled, I'm using a 20" cinema display here at work, spanning my mac.

 

[Pakman]

Originally posted by: sleepykid
sorry to say something off topic, but pakman, have you tried to see how well the dell works at native res. with max settings in FPS games with the 7900gt?

I just picked up my monitor from UPS during lunch... LOL... I plan to build my system tonight once I get home. I'm hoping it's gonna be awesome!

Originally posted by: smp
edit: the 2005WFP is the same price .. but the 2007 is the new model. No specs for it though!
I'm spoiled, I'm using a 20" cinema display here at work, spanning my mac.

I got it with coupons for $363... Wish the 2007FPW was the same price, I'm sure it will be eventually.