[QUOTE="hitman6actual"][QUOTE="trollop_scat"]
People are starting to make fun of my old rig and I'm tempted to buy a new one but haven't been paying close attention.
I know Intel CPUs are the way to go and it looks like ATI is the way to go for video cards because they have 2GB and 4GB of on-board RAM. My goal is to power a 30 inch mintor at 25x16 resolution in most games.
Question: Is Socket LGA 1366 new, or is it going to be dead in a couple years? I can't upgrade my currecnt CPU because AMD doesn't make anything for Socket 939 any more so this is a big deal for me. I don't wanna buy a mobo with a dying socket, basically.
I'm all ears on which video card I should get but the ATI Radeon HD 5870 2GB seems like a good idea. The 4GB cards are obnoxiously expensive and I'm sure the next wave of $500 cards will come with 4GB or more, standard, so paying the premium now seems kinda stupid.
How important is name brand RAM? I'm not gonna over-clock it. Can I get away with having 6GB of the regular stuff?
SSDs seem outrageous too. Lots of $$$ for little space, they're like Manhattan real estate. Are they worth it? Are prices going to dramatically come down on those babies any time soon?
Sorry for all the questions but I don't wanna make an uniformed purchase. I'd appreciate any advice or tips you have...
Neo_revolution7
IMO Intel is too much money for a purely gaming computer. The i7 isn't worth it, and I would take a Phenom II X4 any day over and i5. But to answer your question, LGA1136 is defiantly not dead. If I was you however, I would go for an AM3 socket, and a Phenom II X4 955/965 and save some money. Generally speaking, ATI is currently still the way to go GPU wise. The GTX470 and GTX480 have been rumored to become discontinued because of their disgraceful power consumption, heat production, and lack of interest from the public. Basically the only reason to go Nvidia right now, is if you want something in the $200 price range, in which case you would want to look into the GTX460, which in contrast to the GTX470 and 480, is a smashing hit for Nvidia. That aside, I would either get a 5870, or really go all out and get a 5970 for that res. I'm not sure of what the effect of the extra memory will have on your huge res. because I only know of performance increases with more memory if your using 2GB. over 1GB. on multiple monitor setups. As far as RAM is concerned, you really only need 4GB of the highest clocked, dual channel memory that you can find, that your motherboard supports. 6 gigs of DDR3 is really kind of overkill for gaming. But you defiantly want to buy brand name, just like you do on your PSU, as off brand RAM can be as troublesome for your system as a failing, off brand PSU. On the matter of SDDs, I personally don't think the high cost is quite justifiable quite yet.You can buy a very large HDD that is pretty damn fast, and will cost less than a relatively small SDD. The only reason I would see to buy one right now is if you are planning to use the SDD as a boot drive, making windows run lightning fast. But still, your going to pay a hefty price for only a small, 60GB, SDD.my phenom BE did me well and i was happy and honestly i wouldn't say i7 is worthless for gaming either but thats just my opinion i spent my money on it and im just as happy as i was with my Phenom BE which is sitting in another case awaiting a psu and HDD.
Well I didn't mean to completely denounce the i7 for gaming, as it is, in my opinion, currently the best all around CPU on the market (if your willing to pay for it). What I was attempting to say is that the i7 isn't really needed for gaming because frankly, games can't even eat up a core 2 duo, much less an i7 quite yet. What I was getting at, is for a rig used solely for gaming, the i7 is a waste of money because your paying for increased cache latency, which can actually be bad for games and better for workstation type tasks, and hyper-threading, which again, isn't needed for games. 
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