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Well with a little bit of money in the savings account, at least until one of the kids needs it, Dad is starting to explore the possibility of what the next family PC might look like. I say might because it is too early for me to get serious, plus the savings isn't very high yet (unless I convert it all into pennies and stack them end-on-end - well - ok and use some trick mirrors to boot
).Our current rig is a Dell 8250 that has served the family quite well. My only real beef was the use of RDRAM, which is both expensive and very limiting (i.e., maximum 1.5 GB or 2 GB depending on the speed I want, either choice too expensive to justify).
Anyway, Dell's new XPS 700 model looks promising and is finally a rather open-ended machine for future expansion. See here for more information about this particular system. Btw just browsing of course. There are also some other good choices from other companies.
Even at this point would think about 4GB RAM, since 2GB seems to be the norm. Also would try to maximum the CPU. So hard to tell how fast you really need a CPU, what with so much processing and memory being given not only to the video card(s), but also these physics accelerators. Speaking of which, I wonder, especially when Vista arrives, how the AGEIA® PhysX® physics accelerator (or any physics accelerator) will play out with gaming? Also is dual/quad SLI video card configurations here to stay? Seems like most are turning to LCD monitors (widescreen over 19-inch).
When I priced out what I would like it came to the same cost as our last one. I always find the higher-end rigs end up costing about the same. Sure it's more power than before, but remains all relative in the end.
Anyway what are others thinking or doing at the moment with regards to upgrading/building/buying for the next year or so?
Regards,
Tact - "this post costed me nothing to make!
" - S!
