Im currently planning on getting my job to upgrade my computer, having changed from building computers to just managing software im a bit behind on all the new stuff.

Whats the ups and downs on Dual / Quad Core? Whats recommended, whats needed and why are the processors only around 2,4 - 6 if its quad core?

What graphic cards are the edge at the moment?

Phys cards? are they really needed?

Any mainboard recomendations? If always been quite happy with Asus, but Abit has proven good to me too!

From what I understand, each core is running at 2.4-2.6Ghz in a dual/quad core configuration. My Mac has two 2.6Ghz dual core processors. It can run Doom at almost 30 frames per second. It' s bad ass!

Personally I tend to stick to what I personally have never had problems with, I have had experience of Intel cpu' s but have been found wanting. At the moment I am using an AMD 5200+ (dual core 2.6ghz AM2) I find it man enough to run SQL 2005, as well as a few other resource hungry apps. my main board is nothing special it is an ASrock AGP board again it copes with what I throw at it and my card is an overclocked 7600GS which has 512 onboard. I know a lot of you will say about moving up to the DX10 cards, well I will let you in on a little secret, the 7series Nvidia cards will run DX10....shock horror...oh and if you dispute this then look...

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ (2 CPUs), ~2.6GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 1262MB used, 3045MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 7600 GS

At the end of the day VX if you have a particular manufacturer preference then stick with what you know, as for Quad cores, I will move up when prices fall, my board will cope with a Quad core (allegedly). Mind you M$ said that Vista was going to be the bees knees.

I know some of you out there have got a better rig than what I am showing, but I could spend thousands, but in all honesty I wouldn' t get much better performance compared to what I have spent, and I am only showing that you don' t need to spend thousands, it is all dependant on what your machine is going to be used for. This setup will play anything that is out there easily, even Crysis according to this....
http://www.crysis-online.com/?id=339

Joe is right about the rating is per core, hence mine is the equivalent of 2 cores running at 2.6 =5200.

My favorite topic.

When are you buying?

For the CPU, deffinitely go Intel C2D. Right now dual core is the best for games as multi core are not largely supported while dual cores are. Dual Cores overclock to much higher speeds than a quad, so with current game they are more capapable. Basically, Quad cores only act as Dual cores for most current games. However the newer games will all start to support multicore UT III and Crysis for example will perform better with Quads I believe. In any case Intel and AMD are at eachothers throats with aggressive pricing so it' s a really good time for a PC upgrade.

Intel just released a new revised CPU set (minor upgrade). Basically they have a 1333fsb instead of 1066fsb which doesn' t seem to do much in terms of performance. These are the ones that end in 50 like the E6750 or the E6850. Don' t be sold on the Fsb alone, Intel is only setting themselves up for the new motherboads coming out the same way that AMD went AM2 after 939. Almost no performance gain clock per clock but prices dropped. You have to be careful with these as you will likely need to update your motherboard in order to use them. Right now the best deal seems to be the Q6600 as it dropped in price this week by half! http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=22211&vpn=BX80562Q6600&manufacture=Intel


It' s a Quad core, overclocking this to 3Ghz will make this thing scream. That' s what I would get along with a third party cooler. If you go water cooling this thing will be a beast.

Quads are clocked lower because you have twice the CPUs, twice the transistors means a lot more heat thus lower clocks. That' s why going water cooling for Quad cores is such a great idea.

ATI ***ed up this gen for the graphics cards and were forced to leave out key components in the GPU architecture so the 2900XT sucks for texturing and doing AA. In a few months the revised models with architectual change will come out that will fix these issues. This should make ATI a viable option as the 2900 series does have some more advanced technology over the 8800 series especially with DX10 games that make heavy use of programable shaders. The 8800GTS, 8800GTX, or 8800 ULTRA are the only current options for high end though.

I don' t know about physics cards. I know they do physics better than any CPU or GPU will ever be capable of doing, when they' re supported. Don' t fool yourself into thinking that you can completely compensate for a physics card using a CPU or GPU, not in any way that' s economically efficient. The problem is that the games need to be programmed to use it. Not a whole lot of developers seem to want to start supporting the card when the install base is so small, at the same time no one wants to buy the card when no one is supporting it.
Personally I would buy one except that everyone is saying that PCI slots are on their way out, to be replaced with PCI-E. Physics cards are on PCI slots, so I don' t want to buy one and have to buy another one in two years.

However if UT III supports the card as Epic said the game would a year ago, I' ll buy one. Untill I see it with my own eyes, I have no reason not to wait. I' m excited about advanced physics but I don' t recommend buying this untill it properly supported by a game you will buy. So far the only game that it supports properly is Cell factor, which is a free game. On the other hand these things are so cheap, it' s not a big risk. maybe if you have extra money burning in your pocket. I would wait though.

As for motherboards. If you can I would wait for the X38' s. They' ll support the next wave of Intel CPU' s making a future upgrade easier and maybe cheaper. They also have dual 16x PCI-E 2.0 (with double the bandwidth to the videocards). The current P35' s are basically mid range of the X38' s. If you need a mobo today I would get the P35 for a single card setup or an Nforce I680 for dual card setup. But like I said I would wait for the X38 mobo' s. My GPU is held back by my CPU and I think I' m having driver issues with my AM2 mobo but I' m still going to wait for the X38 chipset before going C2D. ASUS is a good brand.

Thanks for the in depth look into things Agent.

Ill buy when i can convince my boss i need an upgrade Which shouldnt be too hard, since i normally just order the stuff i need to get things running here at work, i just need to find a good reason for him not to think its strange that a few hardware components are so expensive

Well im not in a hurry to buy yet, since there arent any games on the PC begging me to buy at the moment, Crysis does seem nice, but i really hated Far Cry, and the two look a lot a like!

No problem, I' m always ready to share my input on this stuff.

yeah, core 2 duo' s own face.

I' d love to build my own power monster of a desktop pc. Just spending over a grand for something that will only be taken advantage of in a few games really turns me off.