Who's waiting to buy a new PC for SoW?

[louisv]

Well this is my second build for SOW...

First build ( May 2008 ) which I am writing this on:

ULTRA Aluminus Case, (2 std case fans + one added)
Intel Q6700 CPU OC'd from 2.66 to 3.33 MHz
EVGA 2 X 9800 GTX GPU in SLI
OCZ 800 Mhz OC'd to 1000Mhz DDR2 Dual channel 8 Gigs memory
EVGA 780i Mobo
OCZ Ventetta 2 Cooler
OCZ Memory cooler

New build (not yet completed, will be a week from now ):

Antec 1200 Case, (7 slow/quiet 120mm fans + Antec big boy + controller)
Intel 980x CPU (Plan to OC to 4 Ghz)
EVGA GTX 480 GPU
Mushkin 1600 Mhz DDR3 Triple channel 6-8-6-24, 12 Gigs memory
EVGA X58 FTW3 E768 Mobo
Prolimatech's Megahalem Cooler (sounds like its from the Bible or something...)
Newer model OCZ Memory cooler

There were two major errors in the first build:

- Two 512 Mb 9800gtx cards in SLI does not make 1 gig of video memory !
and 1 gig is now considered a high end minimum. Unless you have a big screen (2560 X 1600), SLI (or Crossfire) will not help you much with most flight sims (well maybe for AA). CPU limited and all that...

- The ULTRA case has only two case fans, and that is not enough to overclock on air, unless you like the sound of a vacuum cleaner. More fans, less speed = good cooling and less noise. 8 slow fans is better, the sound is less irritating than the shrill noise of 2 or 3 high speed fans.

The best thing is overclocking, that gives a real change in FPS, in proportion to the overclock actually. OC by 25 %, get 25% increase. Simple. As long as you have enough of a graphics card. A GTX 480 should do the trick .

The combination of an OC'd 980X, 6-8-6 1600Mhz memory and a GTX 480 should prove effective...

But SOW will be 32 bit (for now) so that's 8 Gigs of memory too many...
Will it be DX11 ?, that's for the GTX 480...
I sure as hell hope it will be multicore (the 980x has 6...).

Hardware is so far ahead of software its getting ridiculous...I expect that rig will still not be fully used 3 years from now, and then it will be a new generation of everything that will not get used for another few years...

Anyway its all great fun !

Louisv