Xbox 360 or $500 PC Upgrade?

[lazerman]

What should I do?

I want the PC upgrades more but I need to convince my mom that I will use my PC more than the Xbox 360 (Christmas Present either way).

What I want:

A highly overclockable gaming system that will be cutting edge for a long time to come. Games I play:
FarCry
Doom3
CS:S
HL2
Games I want to play but can't:
F.E.A.R.

I also want an Athlon X2. CPU cooler is most likely to be the Zalman Cu or whatever it's called. I plan on re-using:
Case
Ram
PSU
Fans
HDD
Optical Drives
Monitor
Speakers

What new technologies are coming out that I should wait for? I'm pretty sure you all will suggest the DFI Lanparty Ultra SLI nForce4 something or rather.

That leaves the video card. Remember I am on a $500-$600 budget, if I decide to go this way.

 

[003]

Umm,... just tell her don't get the 360?

 

[lazerman]

It's more complicated then that... She thinks I have already spent alot on my system.

 

[killians45]

Meh, get a 360 first. The reason I say this, is because the next generation or two of vid cards are going to feature the phsyics processor built into it. So, physics will be processed by a seperate CPU instead of the main CPU. PLUS they say the physics CPU will double as a multi core when it has no load removing some of the work load on the main CPU. This will be a little bit of a wait, but you know how that will go. You'll get a new card and then "BAM!" the new GPU + PHYSICS CPU cards will come out and you'll want one of those instead. In case you dont know what the physics CPU is check out the Ageia PhysX card. You can get this card seperatly, but NVidia and ATI ( I think both of them) are already working on including the technology on next gen cards, so it'll be a all in one package. So the next gen GPU built with the PhysX technology on the same card, that'll be nice.

You got time, though. Get a 360 and save for the next gen cards.

 

[lazerman]

Yeah... I have been figuring the mathematics on this.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego= $234.00
DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD= $189.00
ZALMAN CNPS7700-CU= $54.99
Total= $477.99

That to me would be superb, but I would only have enough money for roughly an eVGA 6600gt. That would probably fair alot better than my current setup, hell it would anihilate my current setup. When are these next-gen cards with the PhysX chips coming out? Sometime after christmas?

 

[PP Mguire]

haha Nice choice man. Im getting an Xbox360 for free so i have no worries there lol. So im getting an Athlon San Diego 3700+ to go w/ the DFI Lanparty NF3 Ultra-D UT i bought from Nubius and another gig of ram. I already have a 6800GT so im good there. Wish i could answer that last question though, cause ive only heard of the Physx chips twice.

 

[killians45]

haven't heard. Right now its just talk, but many insiders say they would be crazy not to take this up. Right now ATI says the GPU can do all this no problem, but they dont rule out a seperate PPU (physics processing unit) on the same card as the GPU in later generation video cards. When this will happen, I don't know. I dont believe this is an 'if' it happens.

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/8887

 

[gaara]

PPU would be useless unless the games instruction sets are actually written to use it...and none of the games you've mentioned do such a thing

 

[killians45]

thats also true.

 

[lazerman]

Good point. Hmm, what to do what to do...

If I go this upgrade route, I chose the San Diego because of the cache increase, and it will overclock higher because it is a better quality chip.

I can't justify the expense on an Athlon 64 X2 right now.

Anyone selling any sweet PCI Express gxf cards for less than the price of a 6600GT? It seems I missed out on beedubaya's X800 Pro .