I'll probably get a half-arsed motherboard and just use my old video card for my new dream machine, and simply buy a better mobo and vcard after Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 are released. Maximum PC and PC Gamer magazine both insist that spending money on a top of the line mobo or vcard now would be downright foolish. In other three months or so, the top of the lin vcards and mobos (current) will be completely obsolete. The guess it's a combination of the new 64-bit technology combined with the high graphics and processing demands of these new upcoming games. I'm excited! I hope technology will jump forward as if skipping an entire generation. Oh! And with the new space companies being founded, the technology industry will dramatically change. There's one outfit that claims to have the ability to send tourists into space and return safely for only a fraction of the costs NASA would require. I think I heard that on TechTV -- great channel! Here's a fun questions for everyone: If you were offered a chance to leave earth on a massive space ship (to form a separate civilization ON the ship), would you do it? The technology for something like that won't happen in our lifetime (probably not for hundreds of years), but it's a fun question worth thinking about. I would definately do it. I think forming a new civilization with the ship as my new home would be sweet. Of course, the ship would need to be huge, and there would need to be a technology for powering the ship without requiring sources from earth. Nuclear energy or something might work. We could throw a rock or something in the tank and it would provide enough energy to last a 1,000 years. LOL How realistic is that?
Well, I'm hoping to be able to get ahold of an Athlon 64 setup soon (read: between now and the end of next year), and with this new job, I think I'll be able to fund some reviewage on a more regular basis.
I've only seen one review, at hardocp, and both the Athlon 64 and the Athlon FX were better than the EE from intel. Add to that that the only thing besides the 64 bit architecture the EE offers is more cache than the P4. Maybe other reviews show the opposite but hardocp is usually one of the places to go to get good reviews.
Hmm... I think I found my benchmarks and reviews in Maximum PC. I'll try to find it again if you want. Anyway, I'd probably go with the AMD just because I generally prefer AMD.
The P4 EE isn't bad, but it's running around $700 versus $400 for your comparable Athlon 64. Intel did have an x86-64 CPU in testing, but I'm not sure what they did with it. They might pull that out if they need to, but we'll see when their new desktop chips hit. I'm usually going for AMD, but I try to stay relatively current with both sides. Hell, for the price of the P4 EE, I'd just as well buy a couple Xeon's and basic board. $700 is too much for any CPU. Budget $200 per major computer component, and you can build a very nice box.
