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what do you think of pci express , am looking now at a new system with all this chat going on and it was suggested as a way of futuring proofing the machine (if thats possible) also what graphics card gives best value for performance in your opinion, answers on a postcard please :-)

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cause he reads and replies :-)

pci X defo the way to go eh nix? but not SLI eh nix?

if I was building a system just now I would definietly go for socket 939 and probably PCI-express - not because PCI-e is gonna give any benefits just now or even very soon but AMD are looking like they 'er gonna support this platform for the forseeable future and what really gets me wet is the prospect of quad-core AMD 64s which should run fine in any decent socket 939 mobo you buy today. AGP is on its way out and while its unlikely you will upgrade your graphics much in the next couple of years from what you buy just now, if you're buying a quad core in 18months time you might end up buying a new vga card too and chances are they will all be PCI-e by then. At the end of the day, a mobo is not the biggest expense and so it shouldn't rule what you buy now if there is a huge price difference between socket 754 and socket 939 say. However, there is not all that much difference just now and you need to remember that your memory will most likely die with your mobo (although you can try and future proof by making sure you get dual-channel - which of course you want anyway if you're going the 939 route) Personally, I don't believe in upgrading. I buy the most power I can afford right now and in 12months time I'll start again from scratch and have this machine as a really good 2nd PC On the graphics choice front, while I simply adore my 6800GT, I really think the card to go for just now is the ATI850XT PE. If you can't afford that though, the 6800GT is way more powerful than the X800Pro. Do not buy a 6600GT or an X600 or any other such abomination. Better to go back a generation and buy a 9800XT or a 9800pro even. Do not even think about getting an Nvidia 5950 or such like. Nvidia were crap image quality before the 6x generation. If you gonna buy an older card, buy an ATI - at least your games will look the way they should. I expect my next card to be an ATI even though my 6800GT fucking rocks and I couldn't be happier with it. Basically the ATI 520 line is gonna blow Nvidia out of the water and hopefully send prices plummeting for the X800 cards as well

was looking at an amd system socket 939 with the pci-e but was hoping the x600 would be ok, only becuase of price, didnt wanna spend £250+ for the graphics card, thought i could always change that in the near future when prices drop, i know what you mean about starting again however with this new breed of pc in the shortterm a g/card upgrade wouldnt be such a bad thing. BTW also looking at 2 x 160 SATAS drives configured as a raid mirror, no more fucked harddrive problems there (i hope)

These days, for gamers at least, a PC is a dual processor: CPU and GPU of which the latter is the more important for gaming. If you don't alerady have the X600 then I tin its a waste of money and it wont match up to the rest of your system. If I had to choose between raid and better graphics I'd go with the graphics every time. Just backup your important stuff to DVD. Raid is a nice toy and sure it has advantages if a HD dies or you're rnuning a cmomercial website with a database backend but for most of us its just the fun of setting it up and the bragging rights thereafter. I have two 120gig drives on a raid mobo and I need every bit of that space spend the extra money from the second drive which you don't need on graphics or buy a mobo with onboard graphics and use that just now. You can always do RAID later. Don't buy a hobbled X800XT - you'er just encouraging a cruel and barbaric practice - every vga card has the birth right to be the best it can be not some sideshow freek cynically mutilated to support a low-mid end market segment Note: in 3dmark05, my processor can render at a measily 2fps whereas my graphics card renders at 20fps - i.e. in simplistic terms, you're better to spend less on your processor and more on your graphisc card.

what about the x800pro

Still hobbled but to an acceptable degree I suppose - also it will play source comfortably - its a good card and I'd buy it so long as I couldn't get a 6800GT for a comparable price. It all comes down to price in the end but check the benchmarks on hexus and toms hardware to get an idea of where the money goes. At least with the X800 cards you can always crossfire it later