How long do you think...

[JustysRule]

Pretty difficult question, but how long do you think it'll be before I cannot play the newest games anymore?

Winchester 3000+ (going to overclock to about 2.3ghz)
1g of patriot ram w/ fastest timings (o/c as well)
X700 Pro
2x Seagate Barracuda's w/ SATA2 at Raid 0

I'm thinking a long time. As games get better and better graphics, it gets harder and harder to improve on them and to take advantage of faster hardware. I'm thinking in like 3 years, a new video card would probably bring me back up to date. What do you guys think?

 

[Rugger]

In my experience after three years and it's almost better to upgrade the entire system. If you just upgrade the video card, then you run the real risk of shifting the bottleneck to another part of your system. That's my dilemma right now! Built my last PC 3 years ago and now want to play some of the newer games at good resolutions. If i just upgrade my video card I'll shift the performance bottleneck to the CPU and slower system bus speeds. JMHO...YMMV

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[P4Man]

Hard to say. most games today still run on 3+ year old hardware, albeit at reduced quality. I'm guessing you could hang on to your system for at least that time if you are willing to make some compromises; but its a given that GPU and CPU development will just continue and game developpers will make use of the potential. In a couple of years, your system will be behind the curve, and therefore you'll not get all the eye candy. Not a big deal IMHO, I prefer gameplay over graphics; proof being I still have an antique GF4 Ti4200, and I don't crave need anything better, even today, but to each its own..

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[Rugger]

If only I had a Ti4200. I'm on a GF2 GTS!

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[endyen]

How long do you think...

Anything longer than about 10 minutes, and my head starts to hurt.
While you dont have a high end gaming card right now, you are probably right.
A lot of time over the next 2 years will be spent on dual core, the transition to PCI-exp, and DDR2. None of these will have much impact on gameplay.
Longhorn could be the biggest thing to happen for a while, and it looks like you are already set.
I suspect that you will have better equivalent gameplay in three years than anyone with a 2ghz or equal, and a 4200ti has today.

 

[JustysRule]

You really think so? I don't have the xbl stuff, but I have the fastest timings (183 bucks from newegg), so I'm sure theres a lot of room for overclocking there if I lower the timings. I got the zalman 7000 cooler w/ aluminum and copper plus some artic silver 5. I wanted it to be quiet. I wasn't really expecting about 2.3ghz, but as long as its stable and harmless, why not go further huh?

 

[JustysRule]

yeah, those are the timings.

 

[JustysRule]

woops my fault, the timings are 2-3-2-5-T1 . yes it has a read heat spreader. Everybody says they are getting them above 240mhz with slightly relaxed timings, and I don't plan on going any further than that.