Alrights its time to make the best bang out of your buck
841.804 CAD is what I will be aiming, but this is gonna be quite hard since your buying...er..."legal" OS....
Alrights so heres your Build: 808.59. Guess I hit it =D (685.69 witouth win7...
)
Phenom II 955 BE
GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
OCZ OCZ3G1333LVAM4GK AMD Gold 1333
ASUS EAH5770
Windows 7 Home premium 64.
Now I will explain the hardware choice.
the actual AM3 over LGA1156:
You said you want to keep your rig for a good amount of time? 6 years is a bit much witouth "any" upgrade tho...By going AMD, you choose value so very competitive pricing.
AM3 is Futureproof. The next CPU are the 6 cores coming 2010 and then 8 cores coming 2011. And all this for competitive pricing once again.
LGA 1156 sounds like dead. The next cpu is a lame i5.670 that has less cache and cost more. (less cache is not good for gaming)
Now memory talking.
No CPU needs more then 1333MHZ at the current technology (I could throw the benchmark but im very tired of wewriting this whole thread of i5 vs phenom II over and over again... your the 9000 dude im gonna convince of buying phenom..)
so your better with that RAM I chose if you want your BANG for the buck.
The mobo:
The mobo I chose is one of the best in AM3 sockets. Compared to the...UD4 you were getting. It supports Raid, and Dual X16, wich LGA1156 will NEVER support. Dual X16 is a MUST for dual GPU setup wich you might get soon. and the overclocking capabilities of this baby are awesome.
The GPU:
Single, you have the performance of a HD4870. you can play ANY game at 1920x1200 with highest settings EXCEPT crysis.
Now DOUBLE this card and tadam. The scales is 70%. you WILL be able to play Crysis on gamer settings with 2xMSAA at 1920x1200.
This card is a must for you.
Well I could make this thread a LOT more complete and convince u 100% that your far better with this build I just made, but seriously I wrote it...over 9000 times...
Even in Video Encoding and Zipping (Im shure you wont even use that.) The difference between i5 and Phenom II 955 is a mere 30 seconds. 21 if you overclock the Phenom.
well thats pretty much it...You have any questions?