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Yeah but how much was the 4 core Intel? And you can probably buy that 8 core for $150 or less now if you watch the sales. I'm running the Thuban X6 and what did 6 cores cost me? $105 shipped, if you compare like to like the only chip I could get from Intel at $105 was the Pentium Dual core which the X6 outperforms so in that case the bang for the buck squarely landed in the AMD camp.

The problem with the X8s (well other than the arch, see my previous post with a link on why the BD/PD/EX platform is AMD's netburst) is they simply cost too much to make, for every X8 that comes out with all functioning core they probably get 2 dozen X4s or X6s thanks to bad cores so THAT is where the bang for the buck is, although if given a choice I'd take a Deneb or Thuban over Bulldozer any day of the week.

But if you are strictly wanting the most bang for your bucks and like most of us don't have unlimited budgets the best bets would probably be the Athlon X4 for $67 although for an extra $8 I'd probably go for the Phenom II X4 for $75 and for more than 4 cores the best bang is probably the FX6100 for $99 or the Phenom II 1035T X6 for $106. I think in the benches the Thuban beats the FX6100 but both are good deals. Nice thing about the 1035T is I have one and have sold several and with a low end gaming board like the Asrock boards they have a hell of a lot of OCing room, before deciding I didn't want to deal with the temps I had mine up to nearly 3GHz with a turbocore of nearly 3.5GHz. I probably could have gone higher with a better cooler but my apt gets hot enough as it is without adding a major OC to my system.

As you can see though you can still get crazy cheap deals on the AMD side if you just know where to look. These chips have more than enough power to do anything your average person is gonna want to do with a PC, heck my youngest is gaming on a 3.4Ghz Athlon X3 and is quite happy with the performance and with my 1035T I can game AND do a transcode AND burn a DVD at the same time with no slow downs so I would say I'm getting my $105 out of it.

Yeah but how much was the 4 core Intel? And you can probably buy that 8 core for $150 or less now if you watch the sales. I'm running the Thuban X6 and what did 6 cores cost me? $105 shipped, if you compare like to like the only chip I could get from Intel at $105 was the Pentium Dual core which the X6 outperforms so in that case the bang for the buck squarely landed in the AMD camp.

The problem with the X8s (well other than the arch, see my previous post with a link on why the BD/PD/EX platform is AMD's netburst) is they simply cost too much to make, for every X8 that comes out with all functioning core they probably get 2 dozen X4s or X6s thanks to bad cores so THAT is where the bang for the buck is, although if given a choice I'd take a Deneb or Thuban over Bulldozer any day of the week.

But if you are strictly wanting the most bang for your bucks and like most of us don't have unlimited budgets the best bets would probably be the Athlon X4 for $67 although for an extra $8 I'd probably go for the Phenom II X4 for $75 and for more than 4 cores the best bang is probably the FX6100 for $99 or the Phenom II 1035T X6 for $106. I think in the benches the Thuban beats the FX6100 but both are good deals. Nice thing about the 1035T is I have one and have sold several and with a low end gaming board like the Asrock boards they have a hell of a lot of OCing room, before deciding I didn't want to deal with the temps I had mine up to nearly 3GHz with a turbocore of nearly 3.5GHz. I probably could have gone higher with a better cooler but my apt gets hot enough as it is without adding a major OC to my system.

As you can see though you can still get crazy cheap deals on the AMD side if you just know where to look. These chips have more than enough power to do anything your average person is gonna want to do with a PC, heck my youngest is gaming on a 3.4Ghz Athlon X3 and is quite happy with the performance and with my 1035T I can game AND do a transcode AND burn a DVD at the same time with no slow downs so I would say I'm getting my $105 out of it.

Why spend $5,000 for a 32" when you can get a 50" 4k for under $1,500. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7674736 (groupon and a few other places have had it down to around $1,100 over the past few months) I know, some people probably find the 50" way too big. But it seems a bit silly that 32" is so more expensive.

The consoles will most likely cost around 30% more since you guys across the pond are great for screwing, sorry but its true, the game companies just love to bend you guys over and ride you raw. Compare what you are paying to how much you pay for a triple or hexacore here, you guy really are getting screwed. My youngest is gaming on that triple core right now, works great and if games ever need more than a triple his board will go up all the way to an octo-core if he needs one down the road.

The consoles will most likely cost around 30% more since you guys across the pond are great for screwing, sorry but its true, the game companies just love to bend you guys over and ride you raw. Compare what you are paying to how much you pay for a triple or hexacore here, you guy really are getting screwed. My youngest is gaming on that triple core right now, works great and if games ever need more than a triple his board will go up all the way to an octo-core if he needs one down the road.

Because most offices just don't need that much power? I deal with a LOT of SMBs, know what my two most popular builds are? The SFF box with an AMD Bobcat APU like this one which just FYI but if you have anybody still stuck on a P4 that needs a cheap upgrade, or if you could use an ultra low power system? They are great little units, only use around 18w under load and are still powerful enough to do 1080P. And for those that need a little more power something like this in a SFF case.

Frankly a good 95%+ of office users will be happy with either of those APUs, no need to go discrete on an office box. Hell i have one of those Bobcat APUs in my netbook and can play HL2, Portal 1&2, there are even vids of guys running Crysis on the things with minimum setting but to me that is going a little too far.

Because most offices just don't need that much power? I deal with a LOT of SMBs, know what my two most popular builds are? The SFF box with an AMD Bobcat APU like this one which just FYI but if you have anybody still stuck on a P4 that needs a cheap upgrade, or if you could use an ultra low power system? They are great little units, only use around 18w under load and are still powerful enough to do 1080P. And for those that need a little more power something like this in a SFF case.

Frankly a good 95%+ of office users will be happy with either of those APUs, no need to go discrete on an office box. Hell i have one of those Bobcat APUs in my netbook and can play HL2, Portal 1&2, there are even vids of guys running Crysis on the things with minimum setting but to me that is going a little too far.

Seiki has a 50" TV with a 3840x2160 resolution, available right now for $1499. So I don't buy the argument that it's somehow technologically prohibitive. Why can this crappy company no one has ever heard of bring out a 4K TV under $1500, but no one else can make a 4K monitor in an even smaller size (32" or so) without charging over $5500? (and that's for Sharp's offering, which is the next least expensive – most 4K monitors cost as much as a new car). As far as I can tell, it's not technological barriers but a desire to segment the market and charge professional and medical users out the ass for 4K displays.

Well the margins are better on installs and HTPC setups that is for sure, if you don't mind another bit of advice? Really easy way to sell folks on 'em is to have a couple set up to let them play with, I try to keep an "entry" level and a "mainstream" level while telling them the sky is the limit on how bad ass they want it. For the entry I have something like this that is just great for your web surfing, video, and casual gaming (although frankly if you buy the parts separate you can get 'em even cheaper, amazon sells the board for $70 and the HTPC cases are pretty cheap) and for the midrange something like this triple or one of their mainstream APUs although I tend to lean towards the Athlon triples as not only can you pair them with a cheap ACC board like an entry Asrock and have a nearly 70% unlock rate (at least that is what I've been seeing, which makes sense as their quad cores have been out for awhile and the tech mature) but you can pick up a $30 refurb HD4770 or HD4830/4850 and have the thing playing Just Cause II and Batman AA demos which just cause folks to drool. Again its cheaper to get the parts separate but seeing the killer 3D game demos playing? Makes it an easy sell, just slap in steam in BPM with some cool demos and they WILL be drooling.

Now as for 48 FPS? I saw a review of the Hobbit by Diamanda Hagan of all people (normally reviews all the mondo bizarre stuff, but her wife is a huge fan of the books so she jumped in) that made a lot of sense. what she said was "The thing people need to remember is that we have been at 24 FPS for nearly a century now, even a small time director like me can tell you that there are schools that teach you film making but its all based on 24 FPS and the steadycam guys alone have spent YEARS, literally years, learning how to pace every single movement they make around 24FPS. Not only that but the lighting people have been trained on proper lighting for 24 FPS, all the makeup..well look at how fake early ST:TNG or DS9 looks on Blue Ray and it wasn't like they went cheap on their effects, it is simply the fact that TV resolution covered up a lot that BD brings into sharp and ugly focus. What people need to understand is this is NOT gonna be an overnight change, its literally gonna take years to learn how to make films properly at 48 FPS because you are pretty much having to throw out a century of teaching and experience and start over, this is gonna be a huge fundamental shift in the way things are done and that is just gonna take a LOT of time"

And if you think about it that makes perfect sense, as all of your film team is gonna have all this exp with the 24 FPS/1080P way of doing things and then suddenly BAM! All your effects look shitty, your pacing seems "off" your set design and costumes are gonna look like a HS play thanks to all the little details that wouldn't have been noticeable before is right there for all to see, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the first 4K movies end up making people a little sick as the filmmakers have to basically relearn their craft.

Finally as far as 3D goes? I'm already starting to see backlash from the bloggers and critics, even the ones that were originally fine with 3D, so i have a feeling just like in the 50s, 70s, and 90s its about to die out again. i give it another year, maybe 2, and then i have a feeling it'll just peter out like it did before. I recently saw a piece with a studio experimenting with force feedback in the seats so that you could for instance "feel" a shotgun blast and unlike 3D anybody can use this without getting a blinding headache so I wouldn't be surprised to see the studios embrace that or some other gimmick. After all in the end all they want is something that will put butts in seats while letting them charge more and get away with it and 3D will always

Well the margins are better on installs and HTPC setups that is for sure, if you don't mind another bit of advice? Really easy way to sell folks on 'em is to have a couple set up to let them play with, I try to keep an "entry" level and a "mainstream" level while telling them the sky is the limit on how bad ass they want it. For the entry I have something like this that is just great for your web surfing, video, and casual gaming (although frankly if you buy the parts separate you can get 'em even cheaper, amazon sells the board for $70 and the HTPC cases are pretty cheap) and for the midrange something like this triple or one of their mainstream APUs although I tend to lean towards the Athlon triples as not only can you pair them with a cheap ACC board like an entry Asrock and have a nearly 70% unlock rate (at least that is what I've been seeing, which makes sense as their quad cores have been out for awhile and the tech mature) but you can pick up a $30 refurb HD4770 or HD4830/4850 and have the thing playing Just Cause II and Batman AA demos which just cause folks to drool. Again its cheaper to get the parts separate but seeing the killer 3D game demos playing? Makes it an easy sell, just slap in steam in BPM with some cool demos and they WILL be drooling.

Now as for 48 FPS? I saw a review of the Hobbit by Diamanda Hagan of all people (normally reviews all the mondo bizarre stuff, but her wife is a huge fan of the books so she jumped in) that made a lot of sense. what she said was "The thing people need to remember is that we have been at 24 FPS for nearly a century now, even a small time director like me can tell you that there are schools that teach you film making but its all based on 24 FPS and the steadycam guys alone have spent YEARS, literally years, learning how to pace every single movement they make around 24FPS. Not only that but the lighting people have been trained on proper lighting for 24 FPS, all the makeup..well look at how fake early ST:TNG or DS9 looks on Blue Ray and it wasn't like they went cheap on their effects, it is simply the fact that TV resolution covered up a lot that BD brings into sharp and ugly focus. What people need to understand is this is NOT gonna be an overnight change, its literally gonna take years to learn how to make films properly at 48 FPS because you are pretty much having to throw out a century of teaching and experience and start over, this is gonna be a huge fundamental shift in the way things are done and that is just gonna take a LOT of time"

And if you think about it that makes perfect sense, as all of your film team is gonna have all this exp with the 24 FPS/1080P way of doing things and then suddenly BAM! All your effects look shitty, your pacing seems "off" your set design and costumes are gonna look like a HS play thanks to all the little details that wouldn't have been noticeable before is right there for all to see, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the first 4K movies end up making people a little sick as the filmmakers have to basically relearn their craft.

Finally as far as 3D goes? I'm already starting to see backlash from the bloggers and critics, even the ones that were originally fine with 3D, so i have a feeling just like in the 50s, 70s, and 90s its about to die out again. i give it another year, maybe 2, and then i have a feeling it'll just peter out like it did before. I recently saw a piece with a studio experimenting with force feedback in the seats so that you could for instance "feel" a shotgun blast and unlike 3D anybody can use this without getting a blinding headache so I wouldn't be surprised to see the studios embrace that or some other gimmick. After all in the end all they want is something that will put butts in seats while letting them charge more and get away with it and 3D will always

Actually the winning move is to vote with your dollars and support the other guy. Sony has said that the PS4 will NOT be online only and while we haven't heard from valve on the Steambox since Steam itself can go for a month at a time without being online I doubt the Steambox will be any different.

Finally if you want to control the hardware instead of some corp building an HTPC has never been cheaper nor easier, hell the kits come with picture instructions now, you can get a full triple core kit for $220 after MIR but they have over a dozen under $340 with everything from dual core APUs to hexacores, so it all comes down to how much muscle you want your new system to have (I've built several HTPCs with the Athlon triples and they game just fine plus have close to a 75% core unlock rate) and if you want the little gaming console looking case geeks has them starting at $30.

I got my teen boys off the consoles onto PCs and we couldn't be happier, thanks to Steam we all have more games than ever at a HELL of a lot cheaper than they were spending on the consoles, with the rate things are going game wise I don't doubt we'll be able to game on those hexacores for several years with nothing more than a cheap GPU upgrade every couple of years. Most importantly WE control the hardware so WE say what runs and what don't and can actually vote with our dollars. if MSFT wants to be dicks, who cares? We can buy from Steam,D2D,GOG,origin, and retail, not to mention MP don't cost us shit and there are plenty of F2P games out there so you don't even need to spend money if you just want a new game to kill, in fact as I'm typing this I have Black Mesa (fan made remake of Half Life 1 with HL 2 level graphics) downloading and the oldest is having fun smacking people around in TF2.

So just don't take crap and vote with your dollars which we have seen with EA and Ubisoft DOES work, why anyone would pay good money to be treated like shit I'll never know. The new consoles are with the exception of the Wii u all X86 based anyway so you know that we'll see most games come out for the PC and probably simultaneously with the console to maximize their advertising dollar. So there really isn't any reason why you'd have to take crap from a console maker, not like you can't just plug in a wireless controller and pretty much every GPU comes with HDMI outs so even your grandma could hook the thing up, easy peasy.

Dude do NOT save that P4, the amount of juice you waste feeding that beast makes it not worth the trouble. Since you like Tiger kits (which I do to, they are fricking fantastic) you should look at the $130 E350 Mini which just uses 16w under load while giving you a dual core APU that is great for everyday tasks. Since you already have the box you can get just the board at Amazon for like $70, slap in a $12 RAM stick and the system will pay for itself just on the amount of power you save and waste heat you don't have to deal with.

I've been turning old P4 office boxes into E350 boxes and its quite popular with the SMBs, better performance than the P4 at not even a fifth the power. I like 'em so much if I ever get a few days "me time" so I can take my time and set my software up the way I like I'll be ripping the guts out my old Sempron nettop at the shop and replacing it for an E350, I'll get a nice performance boost while using even less power than the Sempron, its cheap, great for basic tasks, and low power, its really a sweet little unit.

Windows 8 ... ummm... I guess I can use the drive it came on as a backup someday.

Microsoft loves you as a customer. You bought their product and trashed it, thus making it not necessary for them to support you. (Not that they would ever do such a thing.) Microsoft only cares about the number of units sold, and you contributed to that.

I used to buy prebuilt boxes (HP, Dell, Acer) with Win7, and I used them as they are, with Win7 OS. But if I am required to buy Win8 when I need another box I will instead buy parts and build a PC this way - something I haven't done for a long, long time. TigerDirect still sells Win7 OEM packages, but for many of my needs Linux will do just fine. Or I will raise an odd, old P4 box from the dead - as matter of fact, one is on my bench right now, loud and hot as they used to build them in 2007 or so. But it's free. Will install some Linux on it for a simple server duty.

Dude if you want to run crypto that the E350 won't run and can't find the card? Fine get an A-Series, you can get one shipped for like $65 for a triple that'll run any damned thing you want. Hell if you don't mind getting an older model you can get E series ULV quad for $68.

As for the drop in card? Its been over a year since I looked at one dude, i don't really run into much use for heavy crypto now that I quit doing corp jobs. IIRC I found 'em by looking up "cell accelerator board" but right now I'm trying to deal with this PLUS 2 chat windows PLUS a nephew bugging my ass to take him to the store so i REALLY don't have time to Google it for you. If you want to know about the card from what I remember it used the same chip as the PS3 along with 512Mb of RAM on a drop in card and was for doing crypto on low power servers, you know, like having a low power webserver that could handle crypto jobs without cranking the TDP. Naturally since that's a teeny tiny niche they didn't do well but the cards are still out there if you want 'em. A MUCH easier card to find that would give you the same benefits would be one of the PhysX cards that was made before that company got bought out by Nvidia, thanks to CUDA you can write programs for it just like for any chip and since its pretty much a math co-processor having it do crypto shouldn't be hard. Math is math after all and those things were math cranking monsters.

But again this whole thread started because somebody said the Pi could do it which surely to God even you will admit that isn't possible, the Pi is good for little jobs, not video processing. With X86 there is so many fucking choices out there that it isn't funny...fuck it just hit me, why not just buy one of the Via based carputers? THAT solves ALL of your problems with the E350 since Via has hardware accelerated crypto baked into the chip and has since the C7. You can pick up one of those for less than $200, use its hardware acceleration to do any crypto you want (IIRC its designed primarily for AES but I'm sure others will run) and there ya go, Bob's your uncle.

If you have the Internet Hoss you are a good 90% of the way there. As I said there are plenty of old tech guys like me that are happy to steer folks in the right direction, hell advice is free. And you don't have to DIY, just grab a pre-built Systemmax and there ya go. And frankly the only reason i know the chip names is I like reading about chip tech, its just easier to say Bobcat than E300-E1300 or Thuban instead of 10xx T 6 core series.

But let us say for the sake of argument you were my customer and wanted an HTPC that would look snazzy and game. For a case I'd have you pick one from a couple of choices so you can choose something you thought looked purty. Now if you just wanted the casual stuff, more HT than game? Then here ya go, a dual core Bobcat (FYI Bobcat is similar to Atom but with slightly more powerful CPU and a MUCH more powerful GPU, perfect for media boxes and casual gaming) and it even comes with the cute case and the RAM. Of course if you were an actual customer I'd know the price instead of having to make rough guesses, but either one of these would game nicely and I would tell you if you ONLY wanted to game the Athlon would probably make you VERY happy,my youngest is gaming on that chip as we speak, or if you want to be able to game AND transcode video or burn DVDs? Then the X6 naturally has more punch. With prices that low you can sell the case you don't need on Craigslist and save yourself even more money, I would usually give $20-$25 off the build if it came with a case they didn't want as I can always use nice cases.

And then it'd simply be a matter of picking a graphics card and slapping on the OS, neither one is hard. If you want cheap with good performance the HD4850 is dirt cheap and will do most games at med-high to high, if you don't mind spending a little more up front to save on your electric bill the HD7770 cards use 40% less power under load and the 77xx cards has the new "deep idle" where it will shut down the majority of the card when you are saying chatting or surfing which lowers the power to something like 16w, which for a gaming card is just crazy low.

But honestly any teenager that can read can build one of these, like I said they comes with pictures and a step by step how-to with the board and the case. Total build time if you aren't in a rush? About an hour and a half, two and a half if you've never done one and triple check everything. I've whipped off four in a day and i'm not speedy. Once you slap the parts in you just fire her up and stick in the OS disc, after that its all "clicky clicky" simple. Then install steam and get to gaming Hoss, if you got the parts at 4PM there is no reason why you couldn't be firing up a game before 8PM and again that is with you taking your time, you use something like Ninite to install the third party software and you can be gaming by 6:30 PM. And notice they not only have browser, AVs, and runtimes like Flash but the have Steam as well so you can just check the boxes to everything you want and it'll do all the work, couldn't be simpler.

If you have the Internet Hoss you are a good 90% of the way there. As I said there are plenty of old tech guys like me that are happy to steer folks in the right direction, hell advice is free. And you don't have to DIY, just grab a pre-built Systemmax and there ya go. And frankly the only reason i know the chip names is I like reading about chip tech, its just easier to say Bobcat than E300-E1300 or Thuban instead of 10xx T 6 core series.

But let us say for the sake of argument you were my customer and wanted an HTPC that would look snazzy and game. For a case I'd have you pick one from a couple of choices so you can choose something you thought looked purty. Now if you just wanted the casual stuff, more HT than game? Then here ya go, a dual core Bobcat (FYI Bobcat is similar to Atom but with slightly more powerful CPU and a MUCH more powerful GPU, perfect for media boxes and casual gaming) and it even comes with the cute case and the RAM. Of course if you were an actual customer I'd know the price instead of having to make rough guesses, but either one of these would game nicely and I would tell you if you ONLY wanted to game the Athlon would probably make you VERY happy,my youngest is gaming on that chip as we speak, or if you want to be able to game AND transcode video or burn DVDs? Then the X6 naturally has more punch. With prices that low you can sell the case you don't need on Craigslist and save yourself even more money, I would usually give $20-$25 off the build if it came with a case they didn't want as I can always use nice cases.

And then it'd simply be a matter of picking a graphics card and slapping on the OS, neither one is hard. If you want cheap with good performance the HD4850 is dirt cheap and will do most games at med-high to high, if you don't mind spending a little more up front to save on your electric bill the HD7770 cards use 40% less power under load and the 77xx cards has the new "deep idle" where it will shut down the majority of the card when you are saying chatting or surfing which lowers the power to something like 16w, which for a gaming card is just crazy low.

But honestly any teenager that can read can build one of these, like I said they comes with pictures and a step by step how-to with the board and the case. Total build time if you aren't in a rush? About an hour and a half, two and a half if you've never done one and triple check everything. I've whipped off four in a day and i'm not speedy. Once you slap the parts in you just fire her up and stick in the OS disc, after that its all "clicky clicky" simple. Then install steam and get to gaming Hoss, if you got the parts at 4PM there is no reason why you couldn't be firing up a game before 8PM and again that is with you taking your time, you use something like Ninite to install the third party software and you can be gaming by 6:30 PM. And notice they not only have browser, AVs, and runtimes like Flash but the have Steam as well so you can just check the boxes to everything you want and it'll do all the work, couldn't be simpler.

If you have the Internet Hoss you are a good 90% of the way there. As I said there are plenty of old tech guys like me that are happy to steer folks in the right direction, hell advice is free. And you don't have to DIY, just grab a pre-built Systemmax and there ya go. And frankly the only reason i know the chip names is I like reading about chip tech, its just easier to say Bobcat than E300-E1300 or Thuban instead of 10xx T 6 core series.

But let us say for the sake of argument you were my customer and wanted an HTPC that would look snazzy and game. For a case I'd have you pick one from a couple of choices so you can choose something you thought looked purty. Now if you just wanted the casual stuff, more HT than game? Then here ya go, a dual core Bobcat (FYI Bobcat is similar to Atom but with slightly more powerful CPU and a MUCH more powerful GPU, perfect for media boxes and casual gaming) and it even comes with the cute case and the RAM. Of course if you were an actual customer I'd know the price instead of having to make rough guesses, but either one of these would game nicely and I would tell you if you ONLY wanted to game the Athlon would probably make you VERY happy,my youngest is gaming on that chip as we speak, or if you want to be able to game AND transcode video or burn DVDs? Then the X6 naturally has more punch. With prices that low you can sell the case you don't need on Craigslist and save yourself even more money, I would usually give $20-$25 off the build if it came with a case they didn't want as I can always use nice cases.

And then it'd simply be a matter of picking a graphics card and slapping on the OS, neither one is hard. If you want cheap with good performance the HD4850 is dirt cheap and will do most games at med-high to high, if you don't mind spending a little more up front to save on your electric bill the HD7770 cards use 40% less power under load and the 77xx cards has the new "deep idle" where it will shut down the majority of the card when you are saying chatting or surfing which lowers the power to something like 16w, which for a gaming card is just crazy low.

But honestly any teenager that can read can build one of these, like I said they comes with pictures and a step by step how-to with the board and the case. Total build time if you aren't in a rush? About an hour and a half, two and a half if you've never done one and triple check everything. I've whipped off four in a day and i'm not speedy. Once you slap the parts in you just fire her up and stick in the OS disc, after that its all "clicky clicky" simple. Then install steam and get to gaming Hoss, if you got the parts at 4PM there is no reason why you couldn't be firing up a game before 8PM and again that is with you taking your time, you use something like Ninite to install the third party software and you can be gaming by 6:30 PM. And notice they not only have browser, AVs, and runtimes like Flash but the have Steam as well so you can just check the boxes to everything you want and it'll do all the work, couldn't be simpler.

Besides lets be honest folks...its an HTPC. Both MSFT and Sony have gone with low power HTPC chips from AMD...so why not just build an HTPC and have control of the system?

Hell you can buy a nice AMD Hexacore for $300 that will curbstomp the chip in the Sony and MSFT consoles, just slap whatever GPU you prefer (If you want to save money the HD4850s are dirt cheap and play most games at 1080P and med/high settings, spend a little more you can get the HD7770 and double the memory and boost the performance by 50%) and whatever OS suits your fancy, I prefer Win 7 but on an HTPC Windows 8 actually works nice as those big ass tiles are easy to hit with a remote and since Valve has ported Steam Linux is always an option, and unlike the consoles its YOURS, want multiple OSes? RUN IT. Want to buy games from a dozen different vendors? DO IT. Nobody has control over the hardware but YOU.

I could understand the consoles in the past because it was hard to hook a PC to a TV for the average Joes and the consoles used exotic chips that gave them advantages in some areas...but its an AMD Jaguar folks, a bog standard X86 netbook chip, all they did was bolt 2 jaguar quads together and there ya go. I built a system just like the one linked for my oldest and it just blows through games like they were nothing WHILE playing his tunes AND having his chat running AND his browser loaded in the background, it never bogs down. And hooking a PC to a TV is as simple as an HDMI cable now, my mom could do it, it will detect the TV and do all the setup and Bob's your uncle. And if you want the little case? They make VCR looking cases you can use if that is what melts your butter but I've built several HTPCs and when folks see how nice the new cases look they usually just skip the HTPC case.

So I don't get it this time, like Jim Sterling said about the current consoles they are just crappy PCs with all the hassles like long updates and online passes but none of the upsides like cheaper prices and better MP...so why? Its not like you can't plug a wireless controller into a PC, Valve has big picture mode now which makes driving with a wireless thumbstick or remote easy peasy, the games are cheaper, MP lasts longer, hell you can still fire up Counterstrike Classic and be blasting away with dozens of folks inside of 4 minutes, and the best reason it leaves YOU in control of your system, so why? Why get worse prices and all the BS from Sony and MSFT along with gimped hardware? The sad part is when MSFT and Sony move to the Xbox 5 and PS5 they'll abandon the systems but thanks to DMCA they'll make sure nobody can just put out a simple unlock so all that bog standard X86 hardware will be dumpster bait...why put up with that?

For instance GPS is much better when it is done stand alone. You get a bigger screen, potential integration, etc.

A galaxy S3 has a 4.8" screen. A tomtom XL 340-S has a 4.3" screen. A garmin nuvi 40 has a 4.3" screen

Additionally, you have to pay no small amount of money to update maps in both the TomTom and Garmin devices. A Galaxy S3 updates its maps for free and does so automatically. I have yet to drive anywhere that my phone cannot map.

I fail to see why a dedicated GPS is better than my phone, especially considering that I would have bought my phone anyways.

You don't have to pay more, just buy AMD products. AMD has opened up their GPUs, supports coreboot and intends to use coreboot exclusively on future boards, last I checked they were even paying some devs to work on the FOSS drivers to their APUs and GPUs to help get them up to speed so that free drivers would be ready at release for their products. Hell as an added bonus not only does it not cost you more money but you can save quite a pretty penny as AMD chips have never been cheaper (especially the Thuban X6s, the bang for the buck on these $100 chips is just insane) and you can build the entire system for less than the cost of the CPU and board from the other guy.

So if you support open hardware that you control? Buy AMD and put your money where your mouth is. I put my money where my mouth is, not only has my shop been AMD exclusive for several years now but myself and my entire family is on AMD, 5 desktops and 1 each of laptops and netbooks. Performance is great, even after 3 years I still get over 4 hours on my E350 netbook and my Thuban just tears through games and video transcoding with cycles to spare.

Seeing as how you can get a full triple kit for $250 or a full 6 core kit for $300 you can eat your cake and have it too, have open hardware without putting the hurt on your wallet.

You don't have to pay more, just buy AMD products. AMD has opened up their GPUs, supports coreboot and intends to use coreboot exclusively on future boards, last I checked they were even paying some devs to work on the FOSS drivers to their APUs and GPUs to help get them up to speed so that free drivers would be ready at release for their products. Hell as an added bonus not only does it not cost you more money but you can save quite a pretty penny as AMD chips have never been cheaper (especially the Thuban X6s, the bang for the buck on these $100 chips is just insane) and you can build the entire system for less than the cost of the CPU and board from the other guy.

So if you support open hardware that you control? Buy AMD and put your money where your mouth is. I put my money where my mouth is, not only has my shop been AMD exclusive for several years now but myself and my entire family is on AMD, 5 desktops and 1 each of laptops and netbooks. Performance is great, even after 3 years I still get over 4 hours on my E350 netbook and my Thuban just tears through games and video transcoding with cycles to spare.

Seeing as how you can get a full triple kit for $250 or a full 6 core kit for $300 you can eat your cake and have it too, have open hardware without putting the hurt on your wallet.

Class 10 cards can be noticeably more expensive.

I''m afraid I would have to disagree. The difference between a class 6 and class 10 32gb is barely noticeable. Check out Tigerdirect... Sometimes even the class 6 or class 4 cards are even more expensive. If this was a few years ago, I would have agreed with you completely. But this is now, not then.

I've got a monitor similar to this one http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2668386 which has worked really well for me.

I don't know...would it be better to get a Q6600 for $70, and still have slower RAM and probably a lower amount, lower speed PCIe, probably SATA 1 if you are lucky, when you can just get a new triple, board, RAM and case for $130 after MIR and you'll have DDR 3, SATA 3, and a board that will go up to a Phenom II X6 later on if you need more speed later?

That said if you have a board already and don't want to risk ebay you can get a quad Q8200 from StarMicro for just $55. I've bought from StarMicro for years, great bunch of guys and great service.

I'm also an AMD fan but I wouldn't say the A10 is a good buy, not when you can get an Athlon triple WITH 8GB of RAM AND a nice case to put it in for just $135. This would give you a boost from dual to triple, much more RAM than the C2D system is gonna hold, and will play just about any game with a middle of the road card.

Actually if you keep an eye out for the Tiger sales (I'd suggest signing up for the emails) you can cut a good $100 or more off that AMD if you don't mind MIRs.

For examples if you can re-use some of the guts like HDD and DVD burner you can get an Athlon X3 for $133 or a Phenom II X6 for $206 And that gives you the CPU with HSF, RAM, and a nice case to put it in. Either of these chips will be great for gaming, I know because my youngest games on an Athlon X3 that is only 100MHz faster than the 450 and my oldest has the X6 1045T and both play tons of games, from TF2 to huge MMOs and shooters.

Actually if you keep an eye out for the Tiger sales (I'd suggest signing up for the emails) you can cut a good $100 or more off that AMD if you don't mind MIRs.

For examples if you can re-use some of the guts like HDD and DVD burner you can get an Athlon X3 for $133 or a Phenom II X6 for $206 And that gives you the CPU with HSF, RAM, and a nice case to put it in. Either of these chips will be great for gaming, I know because my youngest games on an Athlon X3 that is only 100MHz faster than the 450 and my oldest has the X6 1045T and both play tons of games, from TF2 to huge MMOs and shooters.

I've been saying this for quite awhile, if the FOSS community would put their money where their mouth is more companies would be willing to support FOSS. And this isn't just some minor offering, not only has AMD been opening the GPUs as fast as they can but they are moving to Coreboot so for the first time you'll be able to have a fully open system from the BIOS on up.

And when you consider that you can get a 6 core AMD kit for just $260 frankly its not a hard choice. Even though I primarily use Windows I think open hardware is important and competition is vital so I've put my money where my mouth is and have been selling nothing but AMD in my shop for the past 5 years and the customers couldn't be happier. I also put my money where my mouth is with regards to my family, we have 5 desktops and 2 laptops, ALL AMD.

So if you support open hardware then frankly the choice is clear, buy or build AMD for your next system. They have plenty of great desktop chips and if you need a laptop I have gotten several Liano quads for customers and they just love the performance, and if you'd like a really cheap HTPC just pair a Bobcat board with OpenELEC which is a really nice XBMC based Linux with the Fusion drivers baked in. Pair it with one of the Bobcat "VCR style" barebones kits and for less than $200 you can have a damned nice HTPC that sucks less than 18w under load and does full 1080P. Truly a kick ass little system and you can't beat the price.

Just go DIY, then you can have it YOUR way and run whatever you want. From the specs you listed it sounds like you want this kit which is an i5 with 12GB of RAM, although personally I'd say the best bang for the buck is this AMD kit which gives you 6 cores and 8GB of RAM for less than $250.

I've built a couple of the 1045T based kits and they are pretty nice, I'd change out the stock cooler for a Hyper 212 or N520 though as they drop the temps pretty significantly over the stock coolers.

Just go DIY, then you can have it YOUR way and run whatever you want. From the specs you listed it sounds like you want this kit which is an i5 with 12GB of RAM, although personally I'd say the best bang for the buck is this AMD kit which gives you 6 cores and 8GB of RAM for less than $250.

I've built a couple of the 1045T based kits and they are pretty nice, I'd change out the stock cooler for a Hyper 212 or N520 though as they drop the temps pretty significantly over the stock coolers.

The reason I don't advocate Intel, well besides the douchebag compiler rigging and bribery they should have gotten an anti-trust bust for, is that they cripple their chips and moreover they cripple them WRONG. I mean cutting out POWERSAVING features on the lower end chips? Really? You have cache and HT and VM support you can cut, that isn't enough but you gotta make them laptop chips into pigs when you have so many other ways to upsell?

And I have to completely disagree that Intel chips are cheaper and lower wattage, not only because they tend to cripple powersaving on their lower end chips but also because on the low end you can get insane amounts of power from AMD cheap. I mean I can get an Athlon Triple kit for $195 just add HDD and a fricking Phenom II Hexacore for just $210 just add HDD and burner. When you figure in the cost to finish those kits up I can have a completed product for less than an Intel i3 CPU, board and RAM, which would leave me with half the parts left to buy!

And finally I again have to disagree when it comes to SSDs because until they fix the hot/crazy scale when it comes to SSDs I simply can't recommend them except for certain niches like a mobile device that isn't gonna have mission critical data on it, and that article may be a couple years old but if anything I've found that since going up to triple cells the problem has gotten worse. I have several gamer customers that buy top o' the line and they are up to double digits when it comes to SSDs because of all the failures, and we ain't talking OCZ, we are talking Intel, Kingston, and Samsung. In a way it reminds me of the first days of HDDs and how insanely high those early drive failure rates were and of course once it fails you can't wipe the drive so many of my customers are leery of even claiming on their warranty because they have no idea what kind of third world center those drives will be sent to and if they will be risking ID theft thanks to all the data on the now dead SSD.

The funny part is its NOT the cells that are failing as you'd think, nope its the ARM controllers they have on the drives themselves. When that thing fails, which it ALWAYS does with no warning at all, you can't even get your data off because it won't even show up in BIOS. Now once they get THAT fixed? Behind you 100% although I have to wonder how much gain myself and most of my users will see since most just use sleep mode anyway and with Win 7 intelligent caching most of their programs are already loaded into RAM but in its current state frankly SSDs are even worse than Seagate drives over 600Gb when it comes to the number just shitting themselves.

The reason I don't advocate Intel, well besides the douchebag compiler rigging and bribery they should have gotten an anti-trust bust for, is that they cripple their chips and moreover they cripple them WRONG. I mean cutting out POWERSAVING features on the lower end chips? Really? You have cache and HT and VM support you can cut, that isn't enough but you gotta make them laptop chips into pigs when you have so many other ways to upsell?

And I have to completely disagree that Intel chips are cheaper and lower wattage, not only because they tend to cripple powersaving on their lower end chips but also because on the low end you can get insane amounts of power from AMD cheap. I mean I can get an Athlon Triple kit for $195 just add HDD and a fricking Phenom II Hexacore for just $210 just add HDD and burner. When you figure in the cost to finish those kits up I can have a completed product for less than an Intel i3 CPU, board and RAM, which would leave me with half the parts left to buy!

And finally I again have to disagree when it comes to SSDs because until they fix the hot/crazy scale when it comes to SSDs I simply can't recommend them except for certain niches like a mobile device that isn't gonna have mission critical data on it, and that article may be a couple years old but if anything I've found that since going up to triple cells the problem has gotten worse. I have several gamer customers that buy top o' the line and they are up to double digits when it comes to SSDs because of all the failures, and we ain't talking OCZ, we are talking Intel, Kingston, and Samsung. In a way it reminds me of the first days of HDDs and how insanely high those early drive failure rates were and of course once it fails you can't wipe the drive so many of my customers are leery of even claiming on their warranty because they have no idea what kind of third world center those drives will be sent to and if they will be risking ID theft thanks to all the data on the now dead SSD.

The funny part is its NOT the cells that are failing as you'd think, nope its the ARM controllers they have on the drives themselves. When that thing fails, which it ALWAYS does with no warning at all, you can't even get your data off because it won't even show up in BIOS. Now once they get THAT fixed? Behind you 100% although I have to wonder how much gain myself and most of my users will see since most just use sleep mode anyway and with Win 7 intelligent caching most of their programs are already loaded into RAM but in its current state frankly SSDs are even worse than Seagate drives over 600Gb when it comes to the number just shitting themselves.

Except this "option" will take a good $150+ out of your wallet. let us be glad that AMD is still in the game and for the vast majority the chips they make are long past "good enough" because i don't know about everybody else but i don't want to end up stuck with an overpriced "feature" I'll never use, an OS that I think is a step backwards, and the whole thing made to please Wall street and not me.

You can get a really nice AMD Fusion quad laptop for around $400, picked up a couple for customers and I have to say they are pretty damned nice. Build quality was good, the new turbocore on both the CPU and GPU allowed the system to behave like a really fast single or dual on lightly threaded loads, played 1080P over HDMI smooth as butter, and one of the two customers has moved most of his Steam games over to it and is VERY pleased with the framerate and picture quality in his games. And I even found them with Windows 7 instead of "LOL I Iz a Cellphone LOL" Metrosexual. If anybody is looking for a laptop I'd highly recommend them, here is the link and it actually comes with 1600x900 instead of 1366x768, never thought I'd see another budget laptop with anything higher than 1366.

But touch on a convertible is fine, touch on a laptop is dumb. Most folks sit them on a desk which makes poking the screen uncomfortable as hell after a little while, why MSFT insists that they can push touch on anything you don't hold like a book is beyond me,stupid is as stupid does I suppose.

I am very pleased to see some good case design. I really like having a case that is fun to look at. (The odd thing with non-computer types is if they see a really snazzy case, they assume you've got some sort of super computer under the hood!) This one is a little interesting, but I don't think it is $400 worth. Myself, I recently got a lot of bang for the buck modding some NZXT Phantom cases. They've already got a very nice sci-fi design and look like props from Mass Effect. They are $90 shipped at TigerDirect right now, which is tough to beat. Large as hell, too. I think the only thing I really didn't like about it is that some of the older NZXT Phantom cases have USB 2.0 built in. The newer one I picked up had 2.0 and 3.0 built into the case. But back on topic, PLEASE, encourage cool case makers. I just don't think this one is $400 cool.

But don't SUSE and RHEL require sever contracts to get updates? that would probably make going the server route not a good deal.

I still think the best bet would be to go AMD AM3, you can get a complete 6 core kit for $260 after MIR and if you can get by with a dual or quad you can shave another $70 or so off that. The board is using the 760 chipset, that is a Radeon 3000 which I'm pretty sure is well supported under the FOSS drivers and I've used these board before and it uses a combo of EFI and BIOS so you don't have to worry about a locked UEFI.

I tried looking for 760 drivers specifically but it looks like its baked in to Ubuntu and most of the popular distros and since the chipset is 4 years old it should be well supported. I'd say its the best bet, supports plenty of RAM, plenty of SATA drives, and it'll run anything from a dual to an octocore so there is plenty of upgrade potential here but with the X6 chips so cheap I'd probably go with the X6, after all when not in use it'll drop the power and speed of half the cores so its like having a fast triple core and when they do need the extra cycles you'll have 6 cores to call on.

Here ya go, 6 core AMD for $230 after MIR all you got to do is add the hard drive. the HD4350 that comes with it is far enough behind the curve that they should have the bugs worked out and if you don't like it? At this price you can just sell the card and slap an Nvidia in there no problem. I have one of the X6 CPUs and I can tell ya they are great,turbocore makes short work of jobs that only need a couple of fast cores and with 6 cores to share the load you can multitask all day long with no problem. it comes with 8gb of RAM and a DVD burner, just pick whatever SSD or HDD suits your fancy and bob's your uncle.

At this price you can afford to take a chance and it shouldn't be hard to sell the graphics card if it doesn't do to suit you.

Hell that is nothing, i built a fricking gaming PC for my oldest using an AMD hexa, the final cost? $420 after MIRs. Man you can NOT beat that price! I mean you can buy Phenom quad kits, NOT Athlon but honest to God Phenom II quad kits for $150 after MIR and that includes 8Gb of RAM, just add whatever HDD or SSD you want and any cheap burner. Hell you can buy the hexacore chip for $106 with NO rebates now how in the hell you gonna beat THAT kind of bang for the buck?

This is why I've been sticking with AMD, frankly most people just aren't gonna slam even an Athlon triple core, and the prices have been so low i can build people damned nice machines and still make a decent profit and they are HAPPY, damned happy, for the performance they are getting at that price. I also put my own money where my mouth is, not only is my entire family using AMD desktops and laptops but I've been selling AMD exclusively in the shop the past 5 years and people are happy as clams.

Its gonna suck balls if AMD goes tits up, especially for those that need real cores instead of HT. I'm just glad I got myself a 1035T, those 6 cores just chew through transcodes while giving me cores left over to multitask, you just can't beat having 3 cores for transcodes, one for my music playing, and a couple for browser threads and background tasks. Even with a couple of hours worth of transcodes running in the background my music never skips, the computer never feels like its under load, it just keeps cranking.

Hell that is nothing, i built a fricking gaming PC for my oldest using an AMD hexa, the final cost? $420 after MIRs. Man you can NOT beat that price! I mean you can buy Phenom quad kits, NOT Athlon but honest to God Phenom II quad kits for $150 after MIR and that includes 8Gb of RAM, just add whatever HDD or SSD you want and any cheap burner. Hell you can buy the hexacore chip for $106 with NO rebates now how in the hell you gonna beat THAT kind of bang for the buck?

This is why I've been sticking with AMD, frankly most people just aren't gonna slam even an Athlon triple core, and the prices have been so low i can build people damned nice machines and still make a decent profit and they are HAPPY, damned happy, for the performance they are getting at that price. I also put my own money where my mouth is, not only is my entire family using AMD desktops and laptops but I've been selling AMD exclusively in the shop the past 5 years and people are happy as clams.

Its gonna suck balls if AMD goes tits up, especially for those that need real cores instead of HT. I'm just glad I got myself a 1035T, those 6 cores just chew through transcodes while giving me cores left over to multitask, you just can't beat having 3 cores for transcodes, one for my music playing, and a couple for browser threads and background tasks. Even with a couple of hours worth of transcodes running in the background my music never skips, the computer never feels like its under load, it just keeps cranking.

Replace the screen yourself, or pay your local PC shop to do it, its not cheap but CAN be done. next time look for Thinkpads made for the medical industry, those are naturally more high res but again you want it you gotta pay for it, the 1366x768 screens are a commodity and have near 100% yields and the price reflects that, the higher res screens have worse yields and thus harder to get.

And let this be a lesson to you, do your damned homework before you buy! Who buys a $1000 laptop without even knowing the specs? I not only knew the specs on my $350 netbook but I had also saved pages that showed me how to change the HDD to SSD and where to get a touchscreen display if I wanted to switch. What you'll want to look for is "desktop replacement like this quad core AMD but if you want higher than 1600x900 you are gonna have to go for the "gamer" units and be ready to put a serious dent in your wallet.

Look, my advice? Use the laptop ONLY when you need to be mobile, buy it cheap, and spend the money on a decent quality desktop with a nice high res screen. hell buy a decent GPU like an HD6850 and you can go triple screen and have an eyegasm of screen goodness. laptops are meant for MOBILE and thus will ALWAYS be worse than a desktop, worse resolution, slower CPU, slower GPU, its all given up for more battery life. So unless you are living in hotel rooms frankly the mobile should be a cheap portable while the desktop at home is where you have your screen goodness.

Too bad, your loss as I've been buying kits and parts from them for several years now without a hassle one. The few times they did fuck up an order it was all "We're really sorry and here is an RMA" and I got credit for any shipping that I paid, hell they even told me to just keep a brand new board once when they screwed up and sent a 65w board instead of the 95w board that I needed, they next day delivered me a new 95w board and just told me to keep the 65w as an apology. I ended up using that to build a new PC for my GF so I ended up having to buy some more parts from them to fill it out, but I thought that was a nice touch and other than the board not being the right wattage it was actually a nice board.

So maybe you ought to sign up for their sales flyers or emails and try them again on some small things to see how they go for you. I was just like you in the late 90s when their service was piss poor but they really straightened up. Plus you gotta like anybody who'll sell you a quad kit for just $270 and unlike NewEgg I've never had a bit of trouble getting my rebates back from tiger. I've got no less than 6 desktops in my family counting my GF and ALL were built from Tiger kits and we all couldn't be happier. So maybe its time to give them another go?

--Sorry, but that attitude is really rather stupid. I have an old(er - ~2005, 2GHz) laptop that has a 40GB IDE drive in it, running Linux kernel 3.x. I also have an ancient late-90's--early-2000's laptop @ 750MHz running Linux that has an IDE drive. Most P4-era hardware has IDE, some don't have SATA support on the motherboard AT ALL.

--Bottom line: We can't drop support for IDE for at least the next 10-15 years. The drives are still being made*, and some of them last FOREVER.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=8&sel=Detail%3B17_158_32310_32310

--BTW, the Linux kernel still supports RLL and MFM, as well:

http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/IDE.html

Hi fellow Thuban user! I have the 1035T and my oldest has the 1045T and like you I got some crazy OCing when I first got it (I ended up with 3.5GHz with 3.9GHz turbo) before going back to stock because even at 2.6Ghz it just mows through everything.

What I really love is the TurboCore, with my Asrock board I can tweak to my hearts content but even at stock settings with TC I'm getting a little over 3GHz when gaming thanks to most games using 3 cores or less. No muss, no fuss, it just kicks it in automatically when I need the single threaded boost. And with the N520 cooler, which I paid a grand total of $30 for, it stays around 8 degrees above room temp idle and never hits above 127F even when the cores are being pounded. When you can keep a chip that cool with just a $30 heatpipe cooler and arctic silver what's not to like?

What did it for me though was like you how much I could save while still having damned good performance. I have 2 teen boys that also game so I try to keep us pretty close to parity and when you can grab a complete 6 core kit for $345 and that's BEFORE the MIR gives you another $30 off? It was a no brainer. I got myself the Thuban, gave the youngest my X4 925, which considering he prefers MMOs is frankly overkill, while the oldest ended up with a kit I just like I linked to given to him by his grandpa as a back to school present before I could grab it for him.

All told for THREE systems, with the family pack of Win 7 HP X64 and 3 HD 4850 GPUs? $1400 before the MIRs, after I got those back all told it was around $390 a system. You just can't beat that and all the games we play run just beautiful at the 1600x900 res our screens run on. In a year to a year and a half I'll pick up some 6770s or 6850s when they drop to the $50 price range and make my money back on the 4850s off of CL. With two hexas and a quad we couldn't be happier, the kids gaming and movies, my gaming and transcoding along with multitrack audio editing? We have tons of cycles to spare.

So I have to agree, what's the point when these systems already can tear through anything we care to do at half the price of a similar Intel unit?

While I agree with most of what you are saying I don't agree that AMD Phenom II based chips are "terrible" at gaming, if you look at the chart they are getting over 60 FPS and the huge difference in price between an AMD Phenom II quad or hexa compared to an Intel quad or hexa means you will have more money for a faster GPU or an SSD, which when you are already getting 60 FPS is gonna be probably the smart way to go. I know I built two hexacores for less than $850 with Win 7 HP X64 and HD4850s last year and they still blast through any game I care to throw at them with great graphics and no lag.

So I would say if ALL you are gonna do is game? Then the Intel dual cores would be the way to go. But if you are gonna be doing other things as well then it all comes down to whether you can afford to go for the higher end Intel quad and still have money left over for the rest of the parts you want. I know that my AMD hexa just chews through video transcodes while still giving me decent framerate and considering you can get a full hexa kit for just $340 compared to the cheapest Intel quad kit being $500 without HDD or DVD? That's a pretty damned big difference for an extra 20 FPS.

While I agree with most of what you are saying I don't agree that AMD Phenom II based chips are "terrible" at gaming, if you look at the chart they are getting over 60 FPS and the huge difference in price between an AMD Phenom II quad or hexa compared to an Intel quad or hexa means you will have more money for a faster GPU or an SSD, which when you are already getting 60 FPS is gonna be probably the smart way to go. I know I built two hexacores for less than $850 with Win 7 HP X64 and HD4850s last year and they still blast through any game I care to throw at them with great graphics and no lag.

So I would say if ALL you are gonna do is game? Then the Intel dual cores would be the way to go. But if you are gonna be doing other things as well then it all comes down to whether you can afford to go for the higher end Intel quad and still have money left over for the rest of the parts you want. I know that my AMD hexa just chews through video transcodes while still giving me decent framerate and considering you can get a full hexa kit for just $340 compared to the cheapest Intel quad kit being $500 without HDD or DVD? That's a pretty damned big difference for an extra 20 FPS.

Simple friend, a combo of Tiger kits and Steam selling multiple copies dirt cheap. Hell during the last sale I got me AND both boys Saints row 3, all three copies were less than $50 together, and that's probably the most expensive MP game we've ever bought. Frankly it would have been cheaper but the boys wanted all the silly DLC, I only got the Genki Bowl and a couple of the weapon packs.

As you can see you can get a monster PC for $340, they also got a quad with 8Gb for $315 but since my oldest has been doing good in college my dad decided to treat him to a 6 core while I gave my quad to the youngest and built a 6 core for myself about 6 months ago. Just go to Geeks to get a cheap refurb gaming card for each unit (We went with the HD4850s and love 'em, but you can decide what works best for you and yours) and finally a family pack of Windows 7 for around $100 online and voila! Multiple gaming PCs on the cheap. If you don't mind dealing with rebates you can get black edition quad kits for $250 which will shave another $90 or so off the price, more than enough to cover 2 of the HD4850s or to get something a little faster.

In any case between the Steam midweek madness sales and the weekend sales and the big twice a year sales frankly you and your kids will be ass deep in killer games for frankly less than the cost of a single copy of most AAA titles. As a bonus with a nice cheap 20 inch monitor a piece the PC is also their school PC, their entertainment center, their jukebox, and with having fast multicore chips frankly they should be able to game on them for years and years with nothing more than swapping those $50 HD4850s for another $50 card a year and a half or so from now. As it is the boys blast through SR 3, L4D I & II, TF2, all our games run with plenty of bling and zero skipping or lag. And with Steam playing a game with them is as easy as popping up a chat window and saying "Hey are one of you up for some gaming?" and away we go.

You really should try it, its so much nicer. No more fighting over the TV, no more arguments over what anyone is gonna play, many of their friends are now on Steam too (after the boys bragged how cheap I could build computers it wasn't long before their friend's dads gave me a call) and its as hassle free as can be. Plus you just can't beat the selection, tons of free MMOs, plenty of cheap shooters and sandbox games, platformers, there are so many great cheap games on the PC that there is no way we can play 'em all and its really cheaper than the consoles in the long run. And don't worry if you've never built a PC before, these new designs are so simple they literally come with pictures.

Simple friend, a combo of Tiger kits and Steam selling multiple copies dirt cheap. Hell during the last sale I got me AND both boys Saints row 3, all three copies were less than $50 together, and that's probably the most expensive MP game we've ever bought. Frankly it would have been cheaper but the boys wanted all the silly DLC, I only got the Genki Bowl and a couple of the weapon packs.

As you can see you can get a monster PC for $340, they also got a quad with 8Gb for $315 but since my oldest has been doing good in college my dad decided to treat him to a 6 core while I gave my quad to the youngest and built a 6 core for myself about 6 months ago. Just go to Geeks to get a cheap refurb gaming card for each unit (We went with the HD4850s and love 'em, but you can decide what works best for you and yours) and finally a family pack of Windows 7 for around $100 online and voila! Multiple gaming PCs on the cheap. If you don't mind dealing with rebates you can get black edition quad kits for $250 which will shave another $90 or so off the price, more than enough to cover 2 of the HD4850s or to get something a little faster.

In any case between the Steam midweek madness sales and the weekend sales and the big twice a year sales frankly you and your kids will be ass deep in killer games for frankly less than the cost of a single copy of most AAA titles. As a bonus with a nice cheap 20 inch monitor a piece the PC is also their school PC, their entertainment center, their jukebox, and with having fast multicore chips frankly they should be able to game on them for years and years with nothing more than swapping those $50 HD4850s for another $50 card a year and a half or so from now. As it is the boys blast through SR 3, L4D I & II, TF2, all our games run with plenty of bling and zero skipping or lag. And with Steam playing a game with them is as easy as popping up a chat window and saying "Hey are one of you up for some gaming?" and away we go.

You really should try it, its so much nicer. No more fighting over the TV, no more arguments over what anyone is gonna play, many of their friends are now on Steam too (after the boys bragged how cheap I could build computers it wasn't long before their friend's dads gave me a call) and its as hassle free as can be. Plus you just can't beat the selection, tons of free MMOs, plenty of cheap shooters and sandbox games, platformers, there are so many great cheap games on the PC that there is no way we can play 'em all and its really cheaper than the consoles in the long run. And don't worry if you've never built a PC before, these new designs are so simple they literally come with pictures.

Apple is a boutique brand dude, like Prada or Porsche. Its a totally different demographic which is why studies shown the average Apple X86 buyer made $110K a year and the average non Apple buyer makes between $35-45K a year.

The SECOND that multicores dropped from the "Jesus Christ!" price tags my ass was popping them into systems, because I DO care about my systems, I'm damned proud of them in fact. While everyone else was using the cheaper boards that would only hold 2Gb? My boards held 4Gb, now my boards hold a bare minimum of 8Gb but most go to 16Gb or even 32Gb

And if they need more? They can have it, cheaper than Apple and with better hardware. I always laugh at the "Microsoft tax" while nobody says squat about the "OSX Tax" which tends to add 40%-60% markups, its just nuts. Frankly the ONLY reason I would point anyone at an Apple is if they worked in a niche where they needed retina, such as the medical field, everyone else? You can have a monster laptop with better specs for less money.

So if you really really REALLY hate Windows? just grab something like that and add OSX. For everyone else they are better off coming to somebody like me who'll build them a custom designed machine around their usage, instead of taking what any OEM decides what is best.

$2000?? some server are desktop like at price as low as $300

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=30&sel=Detail%3B112_727_9505_9505

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=30&sel=Detail%3B112_727_8915_8915

$2000?? some server are desktop like at price as low as $300

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=30&sel=Detail%3B112_727_9505_9505

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=30&sel=Detail%3B112_727_8915_8915

I'll tell ya what happened Billy, PCs passed "good enough" and went straight to "insanely overpowered" that's what happened. Frankly for a good 85%-90% of the PC users out there a dual core has more cycles than they know what to do with and with the MHZ wars over there just isn't a reason to get rid of a PC until it dies. Even businesses are starting to keep PCs until they die because for your average worker even a 5 year old Phenom I quad is just total overkill, they just can't keep the chips fed with work.

When tiger was having one of their "Quad cores for $120!" kit sales like they are having right now just for the hell of it I picked up one for my dad, he is about as average as average can get when it comes to users. he IMs, uses Facebook, watches videos, just your bog standard average user. Now what I found when I did my 3 month checkup on his PC? Looking at the logs he had yet to even hit 40% on the chip, and this was one of the 2.1GHz Phenom Is. he just couldn't come up with enough work to stress the CPU.

So if you want to know what happened there you go. A recession didn't help but frankly even before it folks just weren't buying computers because the ones they had worked just fine. I only upgraded my family this year off the Pentium Ds they had because they had just now become a hindrance for the games the boys played, and I had NO problem selling them off for $100 a piece. Last I heard both are purring like kittens and the folks that bought them are quite happy because FB, IMing, and watching videos? just not that stressful.