New CPU parts?!?!?

[TheNobleEU]

I disagree with the "buy the latest available kit" philosophy, that is the most expensive way to equipment.

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Disagree there as well, if you wanted to most recent technology you would have to spent £1500+ on some P4 with dual 6800GT's and such....
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Where as for at least half the price you could get sometime like a AMD 64 bit which is far more kitted up for the future, sure it might be good to go the extra mile on the graphics card, Ram and PSU but for CPU & motherboard i would always look for decent proforming cheaper models that are ready to imbrace 64bit world and newer CPU's.

I should have been more specific.

No reason for one to buy e.g., dual 6800 Ultras for SLI (as you will see in my post above, I didn't, even though I did buy the best SLI mobo out at the moment) but neither, IMHO, should one be buying already outdated hardware (he was thinking about buying a socket 754). This sort of thing is what I had in mind when I said "buy the best tech available at the time."

Buying backward is a waste of cash, IMHO. On the other hand if you buy a cutting edge mobo and a decent CPU, you won't need to upgrade for years (I should have said "you should be spending your money on the grassroots of the machine, not peripherals-ancillaries, if money is a concern.") For example I bought a 3500+ 64 during this time when nothing really needs more than 3000+. Our AMD 64s aren't supported fully by the soft yet...

6600 GTs will probably be $150 in a short time with the release of the x800XL, just as the 6800 Ultras have already come down in price from their initial release. I totally agree that only the hardest core immediately buy the cutting edge upon release (this wasn't what I was suggesting); if we had all done that, we'd be paying $600 for a 6800 Ultra that might already have been potentially eclipsed. No thanks.

I couldn't be bothered to buy even a 6800GT, as the 6600 GT I bought has high OC potential and benchmarks close to the 6800s, at a fraction of the cost. I recommend doing a lot of reading (recommendations and hardware reports) before buying any hardware. NB., see my thread here:

https://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/t96980.html

That said I bought the whole new rig listed above only about months and a half ago, including a Samsung Syncmaster 710n 17" LCD and some other goodies, and paid a little over $1600. This is a far cry from the mid 90s where I paid $4000!

Cheers,
-Noble.