The last time I built my PC was when the 6800 series were recently released. Basically, since I still have a AGP mobo, the only thing I could salvage would be the soundcard, which I am definitely going to do since its a good one. But I've decided to leave this system basically intact and rebuild a completely new one. However, I would like advice on what may be released in the future that I should look out for, and advice on how to maximize my performance to price ratio, with good upgradibility (a good mobo)

The list of games that I'm interested in playing are:
FSX

Starcraft 2 + other rts games

Alan Wake (requires Vista and enjoys a beastly quad core)

Crysis - just because it looks great

One of the big questions that I have is what to do with the OS. I'm pretty sure that I have a oem xp edition. I believe those have a one install per mobo, while standard edition has mutliple installs (correct me if I'm wrong?) One thing that just occured to me is that I have the telephone registration key, which I obtained legally, not through one of those keygens. Will that allow me to bypass that restriction? If so, I'd probably be inclined to purchase retail Vista for my old computer, and install my old xp on the new one, for the increased performance, and later when Vista improves (hopefully) I'd switch them back. Hopefully everything I said is correct and will allow what I said to happen.

Here's my list of PC parts.

The main ingredients

EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $259.99

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400 - Retail $209.99

EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 Video Card - Retail $339.99 - $50.00 Rebate

Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) - Retail $60.99 - $25.00 Rebate

I probably spent more on the motherboard that would be recommended, and last time I built, I didn't put much thought into what kind of mobo would be best. I still bought a good one, K8N Neo2 Platnum, but some of the things that I never looked at before that I notice now is the FSB. How important is the FSB on the mobo in determining its life. It looks to me that once a CPU gets a faster bus speed than the FSB, then the CPU is being bottlenecked by the mobo, correct? I still don't understand the importance of ram timings, and any important connections between a mobo and the ram. If someone would tell me, that would be nice. Because of my lack of ram understanding, I bought basically the cheapest I could find, to an extent, at least it had good reviews.

Here are the secondary ingredients.

OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply - Retail $129.99 - $35.00 Rebate

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250310AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $59.99

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail $119.99

I think I bought a good enough power supply, If you guys know of any great deals on power supplys or hard drives, I would appreciate them. I'm set on the case. I'm kinda conservitive in that I prefer a solid color of either black or silver.

The total price comes to $1,295.91 without rebates. Btw funny fact, while I was checking the shipping cost, I love living in Maine, the 8400 went out of stock again hehe. O well, I can wait. I'm willing to wait as long as possible but if there isn't any reason to wait, like big price drops or a new technology, then I would gladly willing to.

Thankyou to everyone who responds and were willing to listen to my comments.:D P.S. It's really strange that hardware section was moved, it feels too high up on the list.

One of the first real games that I played. (Btw I have this game on real floppies, not those non floppy floppies.)

And some of my other early childhood memories.

First FPS I ever played (I believe)

One of my favorite games of all time.

As good as consoles are, they are so far behind the PC gaming experience that there is no comparison.

"In terms of raw processing power, the high-end PCs are at least three times more powerful."

Painballz

Anyone see the irony?

[QUOTE="skrat_01"]

Its an extended demo.

Sheesh its obvious.

There are demos that have full online modes, and singleplayer levels ect.....

Rikusaki

Yes, but demos always have limitations or locked areas.

GT5: P is a full version of itself.

It's not a demo of GT5 because it simply isn't GT5.

It's the PROLOGUE to GT5.

Sony's marketing techniques have been successful on you.

crysis isnt techinically possible on the consoles (without being downgraded horribly).....consoles lack ram....Dante2710

Where is your proof that if it was fitted for the Console, it would be "downgraded horribly". I think i've heard that a hundred times by differen't people and I'm guessing you don't have much clue about anything technical. The limited use of Ram can be covered in many ways. They could limit texture variation, resolution, field of vision, view distance. Or perhaps they rebuild the engine.

[QUOTE="Chaos_HL21"][QUOTE="jdt532"][QUOTE="Chaos_HL21"][QUOTE="jdt532"]

[QUOTE="Meu2k7"]I wont mind as long as there isnt as much rehashing as there was in Oblivion.jdt532

There's a reason why they had to reuse textures, audio files, etc. over and over and over again, that's because of the limited capacity of DVD... With fallout they will make the game allot smaller so they wont have to reuse stuff.... as much.

The reason they reused textures, audio files, ect over and over agian is to save money. Oblivion took up 4.6 GB of hard drive space, DVD 9 is like 8 GB. Making textures, and audio files cost money and take time, Blu-Ray doesn't magically make the game longer, have more textures or audio files

It's not about saving money dude, don't be naive... Explain to me why R&C Future has 15+ levels that are huge and packed with high detail textures and every level is completely different... Doesn't Insomniac have a budget to work with too?... Oh and I'm sure Oblivion is over 7GB which is just about the limit of DVD-9 capacity....

Looking at the requirements for the PC you will need 4.6 GB to install it.

For R&C, Insomniac is a fairly big company and I think Sony helped. Althought can't really say much about it haven't played it yet (not very high on the list Platform games are not really my cup of tea)

You do know that the entire game isn't in installed on the PC right? That's why you still have to use a disk in the disk drive when you play most PC games. It's like the PS3 where you install part of the game data to increase loading times and performance.

Actually he doesn't, because its not TRUE! Oblivion is 4.35 GB on my PC and guess what, as soon as I popped in the disc and started the game, I gave it to my brother and he played! You have no clue what you are talking about, All of a suddon you think your PS3 exacts the exact same way as a PC.

Btw: Whats the prize is sony offering every time you find a game that exceeds the limits of a dvd?

[QUOTE="Flaming_Smoke"]

Asian-American.

aliblabla2007

Lol, I bet they were told an african american is the combination of black and white people.

8ms = 8 milli second Btw 10 millisecond= 1 second I think PimpiNbananas

Try 1000. 8 Millisecond refresh rate is equal to 125 per second.

[QUOTE="Mystery_Writer"][QUOTE="Al3x_n90"][QUOTE="Mystery_Writer"]

[QUOTE="Al3x_n90"]ps3 version of course(looks better, runs better) o and that screenshot, well, in comparisons they don't enable the rgb option on the ps3 and they don't enable the full white, or what's it called,either, so...anyway they use component cables, y'all should play with hdmi cables at 1080i or 1080p ;)Al3x_n90

is this just a conspiracy theory of yours? or you really know something about how they captured the ps3 footage in this comparison?

do you even have a ps3?did you ever play on one? well clearly someone who has a ps3 would know the dif between rgb on full and rgb on limited.

take it easy, it's just a simple question really.

here, i'll simplify it with multiple choices:

DMC4 PS3 footage wasn't captured properly, and I know so because:

a) I heard it somewhere, here is a link ...

b) I just enjoy pulling stuff out of my hiney.

o, aren't you an inssistent 360 fanboy? :) ok dude here's a link http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29150.html

video comparison, they look identical, of course with component cables, they only go at 576i or something like that, buy a hdmi cable, and see it at 1080p, oh, and as a fact, ps3 has hdmi 1.3, 360=hdmi 1.2 :)

I bet you dont even know what hdmi 1.3 does...

I think we all know why Japan is not crazy for the 360. What is America good at, warfare with guns. What is Japan good at, sword fighting. We all know that Japan was not successful in invading countries because it completely backfired on them when they attacked us. Even though we helped rebuild their economy, they are still jealous of our mighty power (Im not saying Japan is the only one, they are one of the many, of course some of that jealousy turns into hatred and thats why we are one of the most hated countries, (hopefully more people hate North Korea)..

If the Japanese people were to buy the 360, which has a crap load of warfare games, then it is almost like they are supporting what we americans did to them. They prefer to live in a fantasy land where they believe people still are succesful at fighting with swords.