What technologies will gamers need most in the future?

[psy44]

I am going to buy a $1600 computer, and I was wondering what would be good for the future(AGP 8.0, etc)?

 

[Mardeth]

Depends on what your going to do with the computer. Games, work or something else?

 

[Electric Amish]

If you are buying a computer now, I doubt it's still going to be able to run anything when these new technologies come out and actually become useful.

amish

 

[Smilin]

166Mhz FSB support in your mobo will be a good thing if you're an AMD owner.

AGP 8x is useless. Honestly there hasn't been a useful jump since we went from 1x to 2x.

USB 2.0 support. No hype here..it really is faster.

My rules O thumb when building a new system:
Put tons of money into these components:
Monitor, Case, Power supply, Speakers, CPU Heatsink. They won't go obsolete and should last you through several motherboards/cpu's.

For everything else buy N-1 where N is the greatest thing out there.

Overbuy your memory...as in if you need PC2100, buy PC3200 instead. It will transition to your next mobo.

Go cheap on these:
Network cards, CD burner.

Don't buy hard drives while anticipating growth. Buy what you think you need, when you outgrow it the price will have dropped...get a 2nd drive and a raid controller.

Get integrated components on your motherboard only when the price makes sense..remember you throw them away when you get your next mobo.

AND whatever you do: Don't let yourself buy and then a week later wish you had something better. Do it man! get what you want!

$1600 will get you far.

 

[psy44]

Originally posted by: Mardeth
Depends on what your going to do with the computer. Games, work or something else?

The title says "What technologies will gamers need most in the future?

 

[ai42]

166Mhz FSB support in your mobo will be a good thing if you're an AMD owner.

And that Socket A is going to be SOOO useful when Hammer hits.

New technologies to look for.

DVI connections on Video card (if your looking into a possible LCD)
8X AGP (hey right now its not all practical to switch over but I'm sure down the line it will be)
Serial ATA, no drive is currently out but will certainly be the "next thing" and backwards compatability with your old ATA/100 will only last so long.
Firewire/USB 2.0 hey I know they are both within the realm of hard drives and CDRWs etc but at some point we may see Firewire keyboards etc because USB 1.1 is dead.
HyperTransport on your Motherboard, as Hammer will most definetly use it but I think only the NForce uses it, but gives you very high PCI bus transfer etc.

 

[JellyBaby]

Faster everything. Serious gamers abhor (sp?) bottlenecks of any kind.

Personally, I'd like to see faster disk subsystems. We're to the point where capacity is more than adequate...now give us more speed!

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Personally I'm upgrading when P4 w/ hyperthreading and dual channel ddr is here and serial ATA. Possibly I'll wait for Hammer and SATA.

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: ai42
8X AGP (hey right now its not all practical to switch over but I'm sure down the line it will be).

I hate to burst your bubble, but there on't be anything that needs that kind of bandwidth for a LONG time. If any program does use that much bandwidth, your vid card wouldn't be able to keep up with it anyway. The only things to look for in a good gaming system are speed and suppoer for the newest standard. Right now, that means going with a Ti4200 (4600 offers very little performance gain for the price) or the ATI Radeon 9500 Pros and above (hey, if you can afford a 9700 Pro, I won't discourage you from buying it). They support DX 9 and that will be far more important down the road than AGP 8x. But since AGP 8x is basically useless in any current vid card, that isn't saying much for DX 9.

 

[Tab]

lol, you wont really need S-ATA I dont think. You wont be able to use the new Hammer in the current Mobo's. If your getting a computer now, what you want would depend on if it's P4 or AMD Based. If your looking at a P4 a Motherboard that uses DDR333 and supports HyperThreading would be a good bet.Assuming your getting a 3.36 P4 or better.I am not a big fan of DDR400, DDR333 is good enough, the benfits from going to DDR333 to 400 dont justify the price. Corsair makes the best RAM on the market. If your getting a AMD get a mobo thats supports a 166mhz FSB, assuming your getting a XP 2700 or better. I could careless about S-ATA, its not avaible yet. Right now a good Hard Drive would be a Western Digital Special Edition. For a Video Card, I would highly recommend it support Direct X9, so anything above a Raedon 9500 Pro should play games well.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

The thing that gamers will need most in the future is games that make use of current PCs...

 

[Bovinicus]

There are no new technologies that are going to make a break the future usability of your system. AGP 8x won't become too useful for a while to come. Perhaps in two years or so some noticeable gains will appear in some very select games. AGP 4x still isn't showing too much of an improvement over 2x, though there is a slight advantage in certain games. USB 2.0 is nice if you plan on purchasing, or already have, a digital camera or some other external device which requires high bandwidth. Firewire offers nearly the same bandwidth as USB 2.0, so whichever one you can get the ability to use is a good idea. Serial ATA is nice, but it's not going to make or break anything. It will be a few more years before the industry totally transitions to SATA drives. Of course, buying an SATA drive and buying a parallel adapter is nice, but only if you care about lower case temparatures. When building a system for a gamer on some kind of budget, I always suggest skimping on the CPU just a little bit and buying more memory and a faster video card. 512MB of memory should be sufficient for quite a while. The GF4 Ti4200 is a good buy, but if you want a little more horsepower, the Radeon 9700 is nice. The non-pro version can save you some cash while still offering bitchin' performance.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

You know, by the time we need AGP 8x it will probably be obsolete anyway since the PCIX standard should be introduced. Food for thought.

 

[wizdum]

$1600, gamer .....

1600 is ALOT of money. i built my pc(monitor and everything) for $652 total. amd athlon xp 2000+, gf4 ti4200, 19" crt.

i would go with a 19" crt. radeon 9700 pro. athlon xp 2400+(they overclock good.) 1GB ddr333 xms from corsair. kt400 chipset.. look for a good epox board or a good soyo board. server size case w/ water cooling. 48x burner. (you can get em for like 48 bucks). 2x120GB WD SE on a RAID setup. make sure the board has RAID. audigy gamer.

 

[psy44]

Ok, let's say I buy this system..
MSI 648 Max-L
turbo gamer case
420 watt power
2.53 ghz p4
512 ddr 333 memory (I might upgrade to ddr 400 in the future)
80 gb WD SE
gforce 4 ti 4200
40x12x28 cd-rw(generic)
sony 16x dvd

 

[ai42]

Originally posted by: IlmaterI hate to burst your bubble, but there on't be anything that needs that kind of bandwidth for a LONG time. If any program does use that much bandwidth, your vid card wouldn't be able to keep up with it anyway. The only things to look for in a good gaming system are speed and suppoer for the newest standard. Right now, that means going with a Ti4200 (4600 offers very little performance gain for the price) or the ATI Radeon 9500 Pros and above (hey, if you can afford a 9700 Pro, I won't discourage you from buying it). They support DX 9 and that will be far more important down the road than AGP 8x. But since AGP 8x is basically useless in any current vid card, that isn't saying much for DX 9.

Umm didn't you just restate what I said in a lot more words? It isn't really all that practical now but I am saying that down the line it could be. Also Doom 3 is supposed to have 80mb+ textures and well having that kind of bandwidth would certainly help move that kind of data around quickly. Cards out today are not really well suited for 8x AGP but who's to say NV30 won't need it? Or even R350? This guy is obviously thinking long term and going to drop a bit of cash into this so why not?

 

[ai42]

You know, by the time we need AGP 8x it will probably be obsolete anyway since the PCIX standard should be introduced. Food for thought.

PCIX is dead, its now 3GIO, they keep changing their mind. It's all on paper now anyway whatever comes after PCI will be a least a year away. Also AGP will probbably stick around as PCIX etc is all designed to be replacements for PCI slots not AGP. The only application that I know of that exceeds current PCI standard is Serial ATA controllers, and even then it is doubtful that Serial ATA drives will get that close to their maximum data throughput. And once SATA becomes more standardized will be built into Southbridge functions and bypass PCI bus entirely. A case could be made for PCI Video cards exceeding PCI bus, but I don't think any manufcauter has tried to put such a high end graphics chip on PCI bus.

 

[psy44]

Ok, I am very confused, could someone just tell me if what I am getting will last me 3 years untill I go to college and get another 1600 dollar comp?

 

[BurnItDwn]

Rather than spending 1600 all at once .. why not spend like 800 on a good system, and then spend like 200 to 300 a year on upgrades ...Over 3 years time, you would have still have spenh the 1600, however you would have better stuff than spending it all at once now ...


otherwise if you really dont like upgrading and want to spend it all at once ... Video Cards have the shortest cycle length ... So I would get a Radeon9700, any CPU and Motherboard over 2GHZ (i'd go with an athlon xp2400 and an epox board, but i know that Northwood PIVs are pretty hot right now), 512MB of PC3200 Ram, and a 100+GB 7200RPM IDE Drive (if you like mp3s, or downloading lots of stuff and want more space, Dual 120GB drives are nice). any cheap sound and network card should be fine (in many cases they will be integrated) go for a cheap 40+x cdrw, and if you want to watch DVDs on it .. a cheap DVDrom

Of all things, The video card will become outdated first, and then the CPU, and then the motherboard ....
Even if you get a Radeon9700, there is no guarantee that it will still be good in 3 years. Heck i bought a Geforce DDR just a couple years ago .... and now its considered to be really slow.

 

[Coherence]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
Rather than spending 1600 all at once .. why not spend like 800 on a good system, and then spend like 200 to 300 a year on upgrades ...Over 3 years time, you would have still have spenh the 1600, however you would have better stuff than spending it all at once now ...

That won't always work, as I've learned. When I wanted to upgrade my PC, I found out that the mobo revision I had wouldn't accept a processor upgrade even with the proper BIOS update.

There's no guarantee that you can spend a little now and be able to upgrade later.