Updating the 'puter for hardcore ownage

[Concillian]

I guess the computer world will never stand-still. It's because of this that I now believe your better off purchasing a whole package deal with all the trimmings rather than waste excess money buying 'exactly' what you want in your computer for an exceedingly larger amount than you would of paid have you just stuck with the package deal.

What happens is "feature creep" when you build your own. If you choose modest components with only the features you really need you do just fine. It's just that people get carried away... this board has this other feature for only $10 more, this processor is faster and it's only $20 more, Oh, I MUST have low latency RAM for an extra $30 (no you don't) suddenly you've spent an extra $100+

As you noted, the advancements these days are generally not spectacular. Outside of games, very few people would actually notice a CPU speed difference of 500 MHz doing stuff like browsing and email, Excel and Word. Since the advent of dual core, there is nothing important left for basic computing except for miniturization and power consumption reduction. Up until a month ago my work machine was a 1GHz P3 and it did everything I needed (including statistical software, extensive Excel macros, etc...) absolutely fine. I had to upgrade because IT said it was end of life and they wouldn't support it anymore. So there are only 3 reasons to spend additional money when building a system:
- power efficiency
- ergonomics / size / looks
- Games

For most here, obviously the last item is their main concern.

So then you need to know "your" gaming tendencies. A reasonable number of Lurkers play WoW, an MMO. When there are slowdowns, it's usually CPU related. Contrast this to FPS type games where CPU demands are roughly constant at any resolution and most situations. Slowdowns there are generally attributed to the video card. In both RAM latency matters a small percentage, but is generally never an issue related to the real noticeable slowdowns. I did some of this kind of testing when I used to play an FPS and when I started playing WoW.

Change CPU clock and FRAPS a given path with the frames per second option, then do the same with the video card clock. Make a graph of delta between fast and slow and you see the delta. In one case, the delta will be pretty flat. In another there will be swings in the delta. The item with swings is the one that matters most for that particular path in that game. If you choose the right sample for testing, then you can get pretty detailed information about what is most important for that particular case. Once you have a system set, you can choose your video options this way. A lengthy process, but you then know exactly what each setting does for your performance. I did this for a rather poorly written FPS I used to play, because it's video options were totally cryptic (Battlefield: Vietnam one of the few games that the next in the generation both looked better AND performed significantly better at settings where it looked better.)

So you choose to spend the little extra on the parts you would actually use (CPU for MMO or RTS, Video card for FPS, get the right amount of RAM, but don't go overboard on low latency)

As long as you keep desire to go overboard in check, you can do just as well building yourself as the bundle deals.