Thanks Colonel.

The reason I won't consider monitors less than 30" is b/c I watch lots of movies and tv on my computer (I don't own a TV), so I cannot see myself enjoying that on a single 24" monitor, so I would use my center 30" for watching stuff on (I hear that surround works for games but not for movies- ie the resolution of the video won't go to 7680).

I guess I could game at resolutions lower than the native 2560 per monitor, but I am not sure that I would enjoy that as much or that it would look good. I thought that LCD monitors don't downscale very well, or maybe it's more an issue of perspective (16:10) than of resolution?

I would get the sandy bridge platform, good deal faster.. or wait a bit more for the X68.

And for the SSD, 1: OCZ OCZSSDPX-1RVD0120 (540 read/480 MB/s write).

And for sure 8 gig memory (or 12 when x58/x68), they are pretty cheap to get now, you don't need the fastest/most expensive memory really, better invest some saved money in your ssd or gpu.

Pepperg., you can get reasonable 27" and 28" 1920x1200 screens, which is what I often use for watching movies. 24" would indeed be a bit low.

Downscaling 2560x certainly would not look good, I agree with that. But at the same time, I can't imagine that from "normal gaming distance" this very high DPI will actually be of benefit. So IMHO from an imagequality/size/cost relation, 3x28" size 1920x1200 will be better.

Reviving my "help me figure out a $2000-2500 build thread"

So, is Bulldozer out and worth it (and better for gaming than SandyBridge), and have there been any kickass new AMD or NVIDIA graphics cards that represent more than an incremental improvement?

Also curious if there's any other significant tech out or upcoming soon, and if SSD prices are expected to decrease.

Thanks

For the video card, the beast that dethroned the 580.

AMD 6990


Bulldozer coming very soon. Some rumors say by the end of the month. Again, rumors put it on par, if not better than SandyBridge.


Latest SSD tech AFAIK: http://www.guru3d.com/article/intel-510-ssd-review/

Thanks

Going forward, as new multi-threaded game engines are coming on line, an 8 full-time core Bulldozer "should" best a 4 core CPU with hyperthreading. Also, Bulldozer "rebalances" between floating point performance and integer performance in its architecture. This should help in "older" games that ran better on Intel. So, on paper, it has many things going for it. We won't know until we have them on the market. Bulldozer prices are rumored to be relatively low. Looking like early Summer for Bulldozer -- but, who knows?

The HD69xx series is AMD's "new" architecture (the HD68xx is a tweaked older architecture). The HD69xx prices have come down so much that I'm surprised at the value. However, both AMD and Nvidia still use 40nm process. Next Fall (?) the 28nm node arrives (it is rumored) and GPU transistor density may nearly double -- with associated improvements in speed for both AMD and Nvidia. Think of the HD69xx and GTX580 as "placeholders" or "stopgaps" while we await 28nm.

For $2500, you will be able to buy more than you need this Fall (if the rumors are true). I'll be looking to upgrade completely -- but, my goal is approximately $1000 for the computer itself (excluding keyboard, monitors, etc). We'll see

I think this will be a popular card when it comes out.


http://www.evga.com/articles/00613/

You might want to still consider SB. Check out the results on this mobo here. 4.8Ghz

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3934/as...iew/index5.html

Also 4.5Ghz using auto overclocking.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/har...-review-15.html