Looking toward a future build

[Gig-O-Ram]

I'm not necessarily going to be doing another build in the real near future, but I'm starting to think of what I want to do when the time (not to mention the cash!) does come.

First, if I put something together sometime in the next couple of years, are dual core cpu's still going to be worth looking at? I know the quad cores are coming into their own now, so maybe I'll be looking those. Then there'll be the Vista issue, and hopefully by the time I get a new build going, it'll be better.

Something else I've been mulling - Am I going to need to get a physics card? I've been hearing about these lately, and I'm wondering if video cards themselves are getting to a point where they need some help, given the nature of some of the games that are coming. I saw an ad for some new game that said "make your physics card sweat!" Great - just something else to try to keep cool...

[simple_inhibition]

i personally feel that dual cores will eventually replace the value line of processors such as the celeron or the sempron in the market. if you look today, you can get excellent dual core processors for under $100. i especially like the new X2 3600+ brisbane core. $65 gets you a 1.9ghz dual core processor that can be turned into a screamer with some overclocking. the only thing intel has right now to counter it is the D805 until the pentium E2160 and pentium E2140 become available.

im personally waiting the arrival of AMD's much vaunted Barcelona to be released before i consider quadcore. native quadcore support, HT3.0, and supposed performance gains over the C2D by up to 40%. of course we have to wait and see what the real performance gains are along with overclocking results, but the specs are pretty impressive. its going to be a good matchup to Intels Penryn core cpu's.

i personally believe that physics cards were a complete flop in terms of market impact. the game writers just arent writing the code to fully utilize them to their potential. now with multicore processors, physics cards future look pretty grim in my opinion. its just easier to code physics acceleration to a cpu than to an expensive and as of now a not highly widespread dedicated card.

[[Dr. V]]

You'll be looking for at least quad cores with DDR3 memory by then. Also, I'm pretty sure the DX10 cards have good enough physics built in for you not to need to grab a separate physics card.

[Gig-O-Ram]

And there's another thing - I went from an Intel to an AMD when I put this system together, and I'm on the fence at this point whether I'll stay on AMD next time, or if I'll go back to Intel. I see a lot of people on the CD2 platform or the Exxxx thing, even a bit more than on any AMD X2 or something on that side. I could be wrong on that. I've given serious thought to trying Intel again, though.

I figured I'd get to pass up DDR2 altogether, and go straight to DDR3. I'm still on DDR right now, LOL! And who knows what generation of video card I'll be able to get. And maybe - just maybe, I'll even get a sound card, one of which I've yet to use. I don't know yet if I'll shoot for gold and go to an SLI setup or not. So far, I've found it a challenge just keeping one video card cool, but I'll see how it goes.

Is there any reason to think that there won't be cpu support for more current coolers? I really like my cooler, but maybe there'll be something better.