Building a PC

[Knight_91]

I'm thinking of building a PC and right now for my motherboard and processor I'm thinking the Intel i7 920 processor with the MSI X58 Pro-E. How long will this long according to games that will be coming out? And will this motherboard support higher end processors if I want to upgrade in the future?

 

[enzo matrix]

Kinda depends on the games. Right now I have a 3870 from 2007 and I can play cryostasis at 800x600 with low settings. That's a pretty demanding game. MW2 came out and I can play that no problem on high without AA enabled. Crysis from 2007 I can play on medium at 1920x1080 without AA.

My results would not change too much if I were using a dual core 5000+ from 2006 that was $600 when released. But it would struggle. It would definitely struggle with the newer CPU intensive games like Dragon Age, FSX and GTA4.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K8/AMD-Athlon%2064%20X2%205000%2B%20-%20ADA5000IAA5CS%20(ADA5000CSBOX).html

I'd say it would last you 3 years before your CPU would be considered a "budget" CPU and it would struggle with the more intense new releases but still be fine with the less intense ones. 4-6 years though and you would just die trying to play new stuff.

As for upgrades, I'm really not sure. I know that socket 775 has been out for a long time but earlier 775 boards don't support some of the core 2 quads, some don't even support core 2 duos.

 

[mister g]

Yes, and for games their beginning to support quad core multi-threaded cpus. The mobo uses LGA 1366, which will support anything Intel makes in the future.You should be set for the next two to three years, but I advise you to buy a 930 instead, at MicroCenter it isn't priced much more than the 920 and it's 133 Mhz faster.

 

[Guest]

i7 on 1366 is top of the tech tree right now and will be supported with new CPU options in the future, good choice!

 

[loneninja]

I7 is the top dog, if it can't handle games in 3 years nothing currently out will. It's been at top for over a year, and by the looks of it will remain there until 2011.

 

[jsc]

i7 on 1366 is top of the tech tree right now and will be supported with new CPU options in the future, good choice!

But there's no guarantee that your particular motherboard will be.

And will this motherboard support higher end processors if I want to upgrade in the future?

No way of telling. Maybe a BIOS upgrade would add support for later processors; maybe not.

I have one of those boards enzo was talking about. The strangest things happen. This board was tested with preproduction Yorkfield CPU's (Intel 45 nm C2Q's) and they worked. So they advertised Yorkfield compatibilty. So I bought the board. Then Intel made some small changes in the chips - deliberately.

The regulars here know that I am talking about the nVidia 680i chipset.