Any views on the proposed system below would be appreciated. Much of it comes from suggestions from mooses' various posts. I've looked for upcoming improvements/new releases (eg Nvidia gt300), but have yet to find any that jumps out, but I am very much open to suggestion
I browse, game, encode/transcode and media playback in that order. The 4870 is intended as an intermediary card until the 58xx drops in price and DX gains greater recognition. I've ruled out SLI/CS as the uniform performance improvements aren't quite there yet. Currently I game on an old Dell 1905fp but I hope to move to a an IPS ~1900x1200 after xmas. Also I've opted for the OCZ Ram over the G.Skill jijsaw as it keeps tot he order to one vendor.
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor 164047 £131.27
Asus M4A785TD-V EVO Socket AM3 onboard DVI VGA HDMI 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard 169532 £68.46
PowerColor HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card 164557 £107.99
Corsair 450W HX Series Modular PSU - 7 Year Warranty 152606 £54.03
OCZ 4GB KIT (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600Mhz PC3 12800 REAPER SERIES DUAL CHANNEL KIT (7-7-7-24) £91.89
Total £464.32
I already have a decent case with good ventilation, and a Raptro 74gb/Maxtor 300 and 460gb external
I game, browse, encode/transcode and media playback in that order. The 4870 is an intermediary card until the 58 drops in price considerably and I have access move onto monitor/display with a greater resolution. Also I've opted for the OCZ Ram over the G.Skill jijsaw as it keeps tot he order to one vendor.
Initially it will run Ubunutu (or variant) and later a Win7 via wmbox for games.
TIA
=tcQi=