Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[Cojafoji]

yeah, the high end cards barely fit into a mid size case ghost. don't see how you'd be able to stuff one into a mini atx. unless the board you have has a pci 2.0 slot near the bottom where there is no hard drive carriage.

[TheGhost]

Are you going to wait for DirectX 11 graphic cards from both companies (Nvidia and ATI)? GeForce 300 and Radeon HD5000 series look promising.

When do those come out?

[InnerGoat]

AMDs new cards are a few weeks away it seems

[Rook]

When do those come out?

and it'll be a much better investment than that ole nvidia stuff.

[343guiltymc]

When do those come out?

October from ATI, though these dates are likely to change without notice.

[bleach]

October is when ATI HD5800 series becomes a real availability although the HD5850/70 are released September 22nd, same day as Windows 7. As for Nvidia's offerings, the enthusiast end will come very late Q4 this year and mainstream might just come next year within the first half hopefully. Invest in Directx 11, it is worth it.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

I plan to get a second 4870, instead of a 5870, couldn't I just use WARP to enable dx11?

[TheGhost]

Gay. If I'm planning on waiting for that I might as well wait for Westmere (32 nm version of the Core i7) also Q4 09.

(Still not positive I'm building this, but if I am I'm making sure to plan ahead)

[bleach]

Yeah, I would wait for the new Intel processors on 32 nm just to compare the characteristics between those and of 45 nm. I doubt there will be any discounts on the Gulftown 32 nm Hexa-core (Core i9) from Intel the first month it is out. The only upcoming Core i7 I've heard of is Core i7 960 (Bloomfield, I think) 45 nm but let's hope there is a Core i7 Westmere (as well as Core i5 7xx =P). I'm not sure if WARP allows DirectX11 on a DX10(/10.1) GPU; if I had the money, I would consider replacing a HD4870 with a HD5870 instead of CF HD4870 because I heard /rumor that the HD5870 beats HD4870 X2 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 295.

[TheGhost]

Yeah, Core i9 should be Q1 2010. Should be available for employee discount just after OEMs get them.

I think the next major output of CPUs will be early next year, which still seems a while off.