Saturday, August 25, 2007

Pegasus revisited....

3 months of MAC Book Pro bliss and I have to say I'm not regretting my purchase one bit. Dual booting with Win XP and the MAC OS is nothing short of the best of both worlds. Granted I think my total time in Windows is something like 6 hours while not playing "Supreme Commander" other then that it is all Mac all the time. I would even go so far as to call the Mac my primary computer.

However to every "Ying" there is a "Yang" and the "Yang" in this case is my desktop. All 75 pounds of it. I've been mulling over the next iteration of "Yang" for a while and I know it won't be a iMac... I love my Mac Book but honestly I do use my desktop primarily for one thing.

Gaming.

While I can game on the Mac Book under Windows I do like that I have a desktop with a full size keyboard. And after a couple of hours you really begin to apperciate that full size keyboard.

And the fact that I have come home to a computer that says "failed cpu test" on boot twice in the last month tells me it's time to start really thinking about a new rig.

I have the case picked out... it's my usual ungodly huge case.

I'm having pain and consternation with other pieces parts and I now am formally soliciting input. Please note that this input will be throughly hashed through and then hashed through again with another party (you know who you are) before landing on a final configuration.

Here are some talking points...

- Dual Core 6750 vs Quad Core 6600.... the dual core has a faster front side bus and is more over-clockable then the quad core. The quad core is a quad core. Price diffrence is ~$75

- SLI.... It seems like a good idea if you actually do it. The kicker is when you strap together two mid range cards you still don't equal the current high end. And for the over all cost of the two mid range cards you can get a kick ass high end card. Also which platform Nvidia 650 or 680?

- Hybrid drives will be out soon if they aren't already. I'm not one to pick up on new technology very often but this one does seem like a winner.

Other considerations, the new chips from Intel and AMD will be out in the next couple of months. Is there enough reason to wait for those chips or utilize what is out there currently? (Personal thought, most of the new chips will be of the quad core and 1300mhz fsb variety and may very well warrant sitting tight).

I'm defiantly in hurry to build this rig as I'm happy with the MAC Book and my Wii (and since Metroid 3 comes out next week I know that is going to keep me busy).

2 comments:

Curtis said...

even if you don't plan to purchase one of the new chips it is still worth it to wait until the release of them because it drives down the cost of the current stock. Sure 2 months might be a long time to wait to save $10 but you also get the ability to evaluate the performance boost of the new chips too.

Ceconix said...

I agree with Curtis. Wait 2 months. See what develops. Are you going Vista or XP? Also, are you going liquid cooled? Will you get one of those air conditioning units for the PC?

Sounds to me like you already know what you want, except for the CPU. Go Quad with high L2 Cache(pronounced Catchy ;)). After that, SLI or a high end vid card will work it's self out. I say SLI, just because you can. :)