New computer

Shopping around, I find that I can get:

3000+
OCZ Dual-Channel optimized 512MB of PC3500
Black floppy, and Pioneer DVD and CD-RW
ATI R9800 Pro
Antec SX1040
XP Home
Asus A7N8X Deluxe NF2 board

HDD would be $120 for an 80 GB one and $160 for a 120 GB one (CAD). I may not need one, I could just use the one from my current PC too.

Total:

$1850 CAD, $1350 US before tax.

Am I just wasting my time by not waiting for the Hammer? Any idea how good it'll be?

yeah

anandtech posted reviews all last week about the opteron..........even with a small processor.......pound for pound, it was about 33% faster, no optimizations, with scaling .........even anand was impressed..........yeah, this purchase would be...stop gap.......but, 2500+ combo, w/ a nf2 board.......is about 200 now.........crank in the FIC radeon 9800 pro 256.......this is the cheapest among any other competitor/asskickin card........pop in the dual 3200 ddr.......and, i swear you'll run like a scalded dog.......this processor overclocks to a 2800+ in the bios......scweeeet.....and the rest of the periferals can be behind the curve, to keep your number tight.......pencil it out, and let me know wha chu think:grinthumb

hey

and the fx5900 is hitting the fan in two weeks as well

Yeah, good points. As you said, this may be more of a stop-gap solution than getting a Hammer. So the release date is September, correct?

512MB vid cards will emerge before the end of this year (IMO because of the growing rate of technology and the wide variety of 256MG vid cards) I can tell you that. I personally think it's insane cuz hardware usually is a hell of a lot more ahead than high performance games.

If you want to keep your computer from being obsolete, as one may say, you may want to consider purchasing a 15,000RPM (15k) hard drive, it's way faster than the usual 7200RPM and I've been told tons and tons of times that no matter how good the specs are on your comp, everything will have to run as fast/slow at the slowest component, your hard drive.

I don't know a ton about them right now but a 73gig 15k RPM (73 is max right now) would cost around 500$ at newegg.com and you might need a controller for it. Best thing to do is buy a low capacity drive like 18gig 15k RPM or something for your operating system and general files, then buy a 120gig 7200RPM hd for everything else.

You may want to do some research.

Mmm, interesting concept. Will the R9900 Pro be out by September or so?

Btw, you may want to look at http://www.xpcases.com for a selection of cool cases. They each come equiped with a 420W PSU.

Oh yes, X-Pider cases. Very pricey, and look good, but I don't know if I'd want to spend that much on a case.

I guess XtR-X is referring to SCSI hard drives.
You could get slightly cheaper 10,000rpm SATA drives. I think Western Digital makes a model called a Raptor which is not too bad a price in comparison to 15,000k SCSI drives.

$149 (US) listed at www.pricewatch.com (just search for Raptor...)

Ya know, I have no idea on any upcoming Radeon versions and what not. Though, you should now that there are a few ATI Radeon 9800 Pros that are 256MB.

Sheesh that is what I forgot. I forgot to say they were SCSI.

Good point, but they're over a hundred more!

I thought I read an article in which project nForce 3 was a failure or something and the team didn't succeed. Maybe read up, NV3 might be good to wait for.

NV3 like as in Nforce 3 or NV35? It seems the Nforce 3 is OK.

One of the two.

I'm new to computers and dont know anything aboutthem, I keep getting error messages