Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt
3-4 graphics cards? Come on 
I mean, it's your money but isn't that a bit extreme? Going to all that trouble just to run one title at full detail a few months earlier? All you gain is seeing some features a few months earlier, that's all.
I never do SLI/crossfire for this very simple reason...today's double GPU solutions cost more and perform less than the single GPU of 6 months in the future.
I agree with what the other people are saying...the way PCs evolve today, you could buy a $2500 rig and it could be surpassed before you even have the chance to stress it to the maximum. If it doesn't get the chance to get used and stressed to its limits, it's wasted money plain and simple. What would i do in your position? Get the best foundation for a good PC by buying a good case, PSU and CPU, ie the things that don't get rendered obsolete every 6 months. Then, use mid-range components for the things that might need more frequent upgrades.
That's actually exactly how i'm set up right now...i have two 1.5 TB disks, an Asus P6T Deluxe, 3GB of RAM and a 700W power supply. I run a stock i7 920 with an Ati 4890 1Gb. All in all, i've spent about 1500 Euros on this rig over a few months (high quality IPS monitor included in the price). I could have gone for dual 4890x2 or 12GB of RAM but i didn't.
I wait for the 6xxx series cards to hit the market and nVidia to regain some lost ground that will force Ati to further drop the prices. Then i'm going to buy a 5970 or something like that for a mere $200 and have the same performance as someone who built a rig the same time as i did, but decided to spend $500 on dual 4890x2 right off the bat. In a similar fashion, when i7 prices drop due to the release of sandy bridge CPUs, i can exchange my 920 for a high end six-core at half the price it costs now. |
Yes. Why would I pay a premium price "now" for hardware to play a game that is not yet released? I could wait until it is released and pay less for the same hardware. Or I could spend the same amount of money in the future that I would spend now and get BETTER hardware.
I won't be upgrading the day the game comes out. I'll wait until other people report back on how their rigs, their new hardware, runs the game.
Most of the time when I upgrade, I end up saving a lot of money by just buying the things that will get me the most increase in performance right now. I have been burned in the past by buying video cards and CPU's that the game I was intending to play could not take advantage of. Oh, eventually something else comes out that justifies the excess hardware, but by that time the hardware in my system could have been bought for 60% of what I paid.
Think about it, the hardware companies WANT you to buy the bleeding edge components to play the latest software, that's why they often work with the development companies. Development companies walk the line between providing a product that can be used by the bulk of gamers right now (medium and low settings) and the gamers that must have the latest and greatest hardware (bleeding edge expensive hardware). There is a push/pull there between hardware companies and developers that I just don't want to be involved in with my wallet.
It's gonna suck if you spend $400 extra for a CPU with maximum cores right now when the games won't use those extra cores for a year or two. Been in a similar situation myself and it didn't feel good.
I mean, unless you have money to burn and in that case, who am I to tell you what to do with your money?
Splitter