Just a note it seems the 7750 is almost as good in games as the x3!
And the difference is really small!
Basically in my view this means you can build a 3-4 hundred dollar computer now with 2 sticks of nice DDR2 memory. And it will run overclock and run windows Vista fine! Then around late October you do an MLU on it by adding another 2 sticks of Ram maybe a video card to crossfire/SLI with and of course the main event! Purchasing Windows 7!
After that MLU you can do another next year if AMD gets a REALLY good 45nm AM2+ dual or tri core at 90-100 USD.
However keep in mind the huge costs of dev these days. Crysis was a huge investment for EA and look at them these days Far Cry 2 was a huge investment for Ubisoft and look at them!
My computer has an Pent 4 HT at 3.2 Ghz. It is old (One of their first 90nm CPUs) and with upgrades over the years (1.5 Gb of ram now and a Nvidia 8600 GT) It runs Silent Hunter 4 with the settings turned up at a great FPS.
Unless Ubisoft plans to spend about as much money on Far Cry 2 on Silent Hunter 5. Such a build based on the 7750 is going to last you heck 2-3 years with a few MLUs. And by that point either 32nm will be king or 3D transistors/quantum parts will mean a change to the face of computing.
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