New Pc before 09

[learn2read]

Thinking of buying a new rig!
HAvent upgraded in 3yrs.
Usage: Mainly gaming
Price: <$2400
what im thinking of-

MB: Rampage Formula (anything better in the same price range?)
CPU: still debating.. core 2 duo e8600 or q9650
VGU: Radeon HD 4870x2
Memory: Some DDR2 2x2gb (recommendationS?)
HDD- WD Caviar Black 750GB
HDD2- Hitachi Deskstar P7K500
DVD" Plextor 820SA
PSU- Antec Trupower Quattro TPQ 850

-I will not upgrade for another 3 or so yrs soo im looking for a future proof rig.
-Have never overclocked but i plan to try for the first time.
My biggest dilemma is whether to go duo or quad. The question is do i need quad although i dont do all that video encoding stuff.
ALSO should i wait for Nehalem. I keep hearing its not that optimized for gaming.
If anyone can recommend me any ways to improve my rig, plz comment.

 

[Roguestar]

1) When are you going to build it? Come back and make a thread (a proper thread) a couple of days before you are going to order.
2) Gaming = dual core. A faster dual core is better than having cores go to waste in games.
3) No CPUs anywhere in the world outside of games consoles are "optimized for gaming". If you mean "is their gaming performance any better than Core 2?", then the answer seems to be "a little" but once again most games won't utilise all the cores of the new CPUs.
4) There is no such thing as a "future proof rig".
5) I am going to now make a witty pun based on your username. learn2read the stickies, especially the "Attention System Builders" thread.
6) Your components are overpriced and under-researched; you seem to be buying simply big numbers and extra Xs instead of based on what is good for the money. Maybe you should consider posting your thread over at HardOCP?
7) Read around the forum here for some other threads similar to your needs (ie: gaming), read the System Builders thread and the front page site articles, then have a little browse through the CPU forum and also check out the LCD thread in the video forum.
8) There should be plenty of time to do all of what I've listed in 7) before 2009.

Good luck!

 

[learn2read]

appreciate the reply. i see what ur sayin.
To answer some questions:
-i want to buy my comp as soon as possible to tell u the truth. i just need to decide on the lineup and im off to the shop.
-i understand about wasting cores when gaming in quad but perhaps within the next 3yrs games and many programs will support quad and thus in a yr- 2yr time ill see the benefits of a quad. correct me if im wrong. even the sys builders thread says to buy quad if ur not upgradin for awhile.
-what i mean by optimized for gaming is, i read in a anandtech article that nehalem will not show great performance increase in gaming soo for gamers its not much of an upgrade. the reason i brought this up is because i dont want to wait if theres not much of a reason to for my usage.
-future proof meaning- i want this comp to last me at a considerable level as long as possible
- read the sys builder thread. but i wanted some other opinions.
-im no expert soo my components are def under-researched but this lineup is the best i can come up with after i suppose medium amount researching.
- the point of this thread was so that i can build upon my current lineup. HEar some opinions and hear about other recommended components i havent looked into yet.
so if ppl can be more specific and help me improve this build. it would b greatly apprecaited
and roguestar.. watchu mean by a proper thread? wat constitutes a proper thread?

 

[Roguestar]

In 3 years' time computers will be almost four times faster than they are now (Moore's law, 18 months) so your quad core won't be so great in the supposedly highly threaded games and programs of tomorrow. If you were doing stuff like rendering or encoding I'd say get it but the way games are headed there doesn't seem to be a big drive for parallelisation unfortunately so I'd really only recommend the dual core out of sensibility.

Nehalem won't show much of a performance improvement in gaming because what it does it largely efficiently combines multiple cores, and doesn't provide as big a leap in terms of clock-for-clock performance increase like the Core 2 did compared to the pentium 4. Nehalem will be great for video encoding and HD ripping and such but games will still prefer a single higher speed core to run on.

By "proper thread" I meant something with the information in the sticky filled out so we can get a better idea and run-down of your current needs and constraints.

If we can get some kind of idea of what it is exactly you're doing with your system we can give even more detailed feedback. If you're gaming at less than 1920*1280 then that graphics card is a bit overpowered and you'd probably just do well getting the 4870 1GB.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
By "proper thread" I meant something with the information in the sticky filled out so we can get a better idea and run-down of your current needs and constraints.

:thumbsup:

 

[coolpurplefan]

If you won't upgrade for 3 years, I might wait another 3 months. Then i7, Deneb, Shanghai or whatever might be out.

 

[rathsach]

I'll give some advice as well then

Personally, I don't like the Asus boards.. But it's a highly personal thing.. Have had 3-4 of them, and all of them were RMA'd within the first month.. Overpriced too..

To futureproof you pc just a tad more, I'd go for an X48 board supporting DDR3 and then going that way..

Are the WD Blacks worth the premium compared to Samsung/Seagate drives? They are not where I live ..

 

[Roguestar]

The Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB is the fastest 7200RPM desktop drive.

 

[heyheybooboo]

As noted, future-proofing is for the Dingo Boys. In the future hardware will always be faster, cheaper and more capable than today's offerings. That's not saying you shouldn't keep an eye on a future upgrade path but buy now for what you need now.

If you are gaming 16x12 and up you are not getting a great bang for you buck with the e8600. You can save $100 with the e8400 and not really miss the .3GHz.

Stay away from DDR3. Adding additional DDR2 ram will cost less and give you a better boost in performance.

And waiting is good especially if you plan to keep this rig for as long as 3 years. Black Friday is just around the corner and by then we will all be salivating over AMD 45nm Deneb and Intel i7.

 

[Blain]

Get any black friday deals?