Neal I fixed that.

I don't agree with Subman here, if you get a quadcore now you also need a more expensive mainboard and you will not see a performance increase in your games. Quadcores run desktop applications faster (photoshop, compression, etc), but seriously, a Pentium 4 or Athlon is already more than sufficient for desktop applications.

There might be a benefit in one or two years but right now you will not find many games that make full use of two cores, let alone four. I personally expect multicores to develop their full potential only when the next generation of operating systems and compilers arrives, i.e. in the next years.

There is of course no reason not to get one. But for games it's not really worth the money imo. If you are a scientist who runs earthquake simulations every day this might be a different situation.

How Subman described it is correct.. :up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20

:up: Correctomundo. Quad all the way. You have to look to the future.;)

Nice results subman.:up:

The Geforce GTX280 solo takes alot of juice some as high as 400 watts of power depending on which brand you buying and if you OC it.

Make sure you get a strong powersupply if you get this beast Neal.

No, unless you're using heavy multithreaded applications, the way to go is to buy a very very fast core2duo. You can save money on the cpu and use the difference for getting a really good graphics card to improve performance.
99% percent of games don't even use 2 cores, let alone 4 or 8 (nehalem processors with hyperthreading).
Don't buy into the hype, if your compiling all day long, using multithreaded photoshop filters etc... then by all means buy a quadcore.
Otherwise you will see no increase in performace for day to day applications.

your right but it helps. Windows and other OS can use the multi processors to do stuff while the main processor is reserved for the primary program running. Well I hope the OS's are geared that way?

I'd recommend you take a look at task manager and see just how much the kernel is taking in terms of cpu usage. You'll be surprised it doesn't go beyond 1-2% max.
Now if we talk about having different programs active at the same time (say antivirus, firewall, etc...), then yes multicore cpu can help, but my point was that having a top of the line core2duo + top of the line graphics card will get you more performance in games than buying a quadcore (whose max frequency doesn't scale as well as dual core cpu's) and a mid/top level graphics card.

Crysis (which is the benchmark in pc games) doesn't even scale with # cores !!!
Flight Simulator X is another offender, it scales much more with core frequency than with number of cores.
Falcon 4 AF, scales with 2 cores and with frequency (its a largely cpu bound game). Beyond 2 core you won't see improvement.
Black Shark is not multicore aware (but scales with frequency).
Sh 3 and 4 are not multicore aware (but they scale with frequency)
etc....

you get the gist.

Multicore aware games will of course come out, but not before the gaming development comunity embraces and targets esclusively DX 11 games.
At that won't be the case for at least several years (until the succesor to the xbox 360 comes out).

If theres's one thing to learn from the last 20 years then it's that early adoption doesn't pay off. Ask that the people who bought 486DX-33, "487" arithmetic coprocessors or in more recent years the GForce3 or Athlon FX because they wanted to be prepared for the future.

I would say get a Dual Core now when they are mature and at the lower price limit.

I had all those things you mentioned (except the co-proc since a DX CPU had an FPU built in already- the co was for you underpowered SX people, and I never had the FX yet and that's new) and I used them all.

So you were saying?

Geforce 3 played Morrowind really good with the new pixel shaders that no one else had! Great purchase! I still have it matter of fact in a box somewhere. As for FPU's, all procs since Pentium on have them. I even had access to one of the fist 100 Mhz Pentiums probably on the West Coast, and man did it play Mechwarrior good! Had a midi board in that system and Doom sounded awesome too!

Quite frankly, early adopters got to max out graphics when no one else could. Same goes for today.

And for a little side-note - quads are not new anymore. They are becoming mainstream. Quads would have been an early adopter thing about a year or more ago anyway. Now I see all the game companies starting to make use of them, so about the time Neal puts together a system, games will probably be trickling in.

-S

Just for the fun, here are your quad core games coming down the pike. Some are already here:

http://www.alanwake.com/

http://www.supremecommander.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2:_Episode_Two

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/

http://www.splintercell.com/

Patch to be released for this:
http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorX/


An article about quad:
http://techgage.com/article/intel_core_2_quad_q6600/7

They also say Crysis will use quads, but I have yet to see anything that shows a perf improvement over duals yet.

The short of it though, Quad will be a necessity going into 2009 so I wouldn't want to be caught without it if it were my only gaming system and I were upgrading right now, and I knew I wasn't going to upgrade it for 2 years or more.

Just my 2 cents as always.

-S

Hmmm.... so, get a Duo now with a MB that will support a Quad for the future, is that an option?

Lol, yeah, I know, I hang onto stuff as long as possible. If it wasn't for gaming, I would still be running Win95 on a Pentium 100.:rotfl:

thanks!

Ok, GTX280 is way too pricey, so I will switch to the ATI 4850, as suggested.

Prelim list (tell me what's wrong or what won't work, or what could be better)

Rosewill RX750-D-B 750W ATX12V v2.2 & EPS12V v2.91 SLI 8800GTX SLI CrossFire Ready Active PFC PFC Power Supply - Retail Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8500 - Retail combo $290

OR

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Retail Great savings w/ EVGA motherboard combo, (Though I don't see the MB in the page...) $165




OR



Rosewill RX950-D-B 950W ATX12V v2.2 & EPS12V v2.91 SLI 8800Ultra SLI CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply - Retail Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80580Q9300 - Retail $360



other stuff:

https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=7559785



.

Neal if you get a core2 I would notrecommend a board with NVidia Chipset (EVGA), they are expensive, the IP45 and even the IP35 are a great choice.

I would not get the E8500 if the E8400 is so much cheaper. If you get a good overclocking board like the BIOSTAR TPower IP45 you can run the E8400 at E8600 speeds, it's really not a big deal, especially with the new E0 stepping.

I for myself am no fan of high end systems, I prefer to buy what used to be a high end system 1-2 years ago. For great a price / performance deal I recommend: IP35 or IP45 mainboard, 4GB DDR-2 800 RAM, a HD4850, and a good HD like the WD 640AAKS. If you want high end you must wait at least until Intel releases the Nehalem architecture at the end of the year. Otherwise your memory will be outdated very soon. And you will want a Quadcore, because some CPU hungry games will need it by 2009.

You saw that post for a $199 4870, correct? :D Not sure if it is still going on, but it might! Not sure about Rosewell. They usually use cheap RAMDACS and power transpormers last I checked, but its been a while.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=143334

Gigabyte usually builds an excellent product, packed full of features.

-S

Well, I stopped by the college computer lab and went over options with the experts. Still not sure which way to go with the cores, but I learned a lot from just 30 minutes with Brian. For example, I have to decide if I want an SLI MB or a Crossfire MB. The search continues.....

You can forget completely crossfire o sli unless you want to use 2 graphics cards in your computer.