Building a Gaming Rig For the First Time!

[orihS ‪‪‪Shiro]

Well Slaymate, it's obvious where your allegiances are from your signature.
I own a Core Duo, an Athlon II, a Phenom II, and an i7 920.
If I was recommending a computer to someone for upgradeability and to be long lasting.
I'd recommend they go AMD.
Probably get a motherboard with SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0
And upgrade gradually as needed for newer releases.

 

[dirkpitt45]

The i7 920, and don't get a classified motherboard. They're a huge waste of money if you don't plan on doing some heavy overclocking.

Not to much of a difference between them until you get to the i7 975, but even that's only worth it if your planning on doing heavy overclocking. You won't be able to notice the difference between them in everyday use/gaming.

 

[Fat.Clown]

i think you should just go for the i7 if you have got the financial capability to do so.
it's fine if it's too powerful right now, but what about in couple years?
if it's not powerful enough for your right now, you have to sell / return parts, pay shipping and take a stocking fee. keep in mind an item's value depreciates whenever it's opened.

here what I suggest you do,
set a realistic budget for yourself
stick to that budget (maybe be a bit flexible)
then upgrade as you feel necessary when the time comes.

here is why,
you may see some of our signatures with super high end stuff, there is a reason for that.

some of us are just hardware junkies, we change parts in our pc like we change underwear.
and some of us are professionals who rely on the pc to keep a roof over our heads
faster pc gets more stuff done; time = money (in a sense).
lastly, some of us are just freaking rich

 

[SirCyber]

gotta say... if you get one of the 2xx series nVidea cards from evga, you can register for the Step Up program... basically send EVGA your card and the difference to the latest card and get first dibs on the latest. AMD typically is cheaper to maintain up to par, Intel typically is more powerful *WOW effect*

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Play games on high settings for the next 4-5 years?
Go AM3.
Thuban.
Gradually upgrade your graphics card as you need to for high settings in new games.

You'll save lots of money and get comparable gaming performance to the i7 920 if you go with AMD instead.

What I would buy to accomplish having a nice gaming computer for years down the road.

A decent 22-24" monitor with 1920x1200 resolution.
Phenom II X2 555 - Upgrade to a Phenom II X6 as necessary for games that require more cores.
An ATI 5850
A single GPU AM3 motherboard with a 710 or 750 southbridge for unlocking
Probably a 770, 780L or 785G
4Gb of decent DDR3 RAM
a DVD Burner
a rosewill blackbone case
a cooler master hyper 212 with some after market thermal paste
A 500w-650w decent PSU
a Samsung Spinpoint F3 500Gb and a 1Tb caviar green for storage

You'll probably save $500 over that i7 rig initially.
Then you can upgrade as needed to continue running games at the highest settings.
The 5850 can run pretty much all games at highest settings currently at 1920x1200.
The Phenom II X2 555 can as well if you unlock it and overclock it.
If it doesn't unlock, that might limit you in GTA IV
But you can always upgrade to Thuban/Phenom II X6 in the near future.
That should coast you by for 4 years.

I would bet you'd save money and get near equal performance going AMD in the long run.

LGA1366 already has a guaranteed upgrade path to Gulftown which will absolutely demolish Thuban.

At this point Intel, specifically lga1366, is the best platform you can buy if longevity is a concern.