recommend me components for a gaming rig?

[Evildead666]

@ Fat Tone : 1333MHz should be considered a bit of a minimum. I can't remember the site, could have been techreport or Hardware.fr, where they tested 1333 to 1866, there is one inbetween as well.
The difference wasn't huge, but it was noticeable, and especially in Games. The integrated GPU only uses one 64-bit memory channel (probably two interleaved 32-bit channels), so memory speed will always help.
It'll still be pretty good, better than most laptops, and you have the option of plopping a PCIex16 card further down the line if you feel the need for speed

@VJ : I read that as well. My current dream machine is a Tri-Fire AMD setup with an Nvidia on a 4x for PhysX support. I also want to have single slot cards, so on the actual 6950/6970 I wanted to cut off the topmost DVI connector. Decided to wait and see what the 7xxx series brings, and from the rumours, they will come with one DVI, two mini-DP, and an HDMI, so should be single slot capable. I want to watercool everything, so single slot will be possible

Have to upgrade my NAS system though witth the Chenbro mini-itx case.
Looking at these :
Motherboard : http://www.materiel.net/carte-mere-m...-b3-65952.html
CPU : http://www.materiel.net/processeur-s...20t-70479.html

Mainly so I can have the possibility of RAID5, and have 6 Sata connectors, 4 for the removable drive trays, one for the DVD/BluRay and one for the internal 2.5" boot drive.
I only know of one other mini-itx board with six Sata connectors, and its Atom based by Supermicro.

Will probably get it in Jan-Feb, got some parts for the old Passat to get first.

[Jammrock]

Yes, but is PCIe3 really that necessary? Benchmarks show that there is virtually no difference in the current videocards between them running on x16 or x8. So the current crop barely maxes out x8.

This is mainly for enterprise servers. With the advent of SSD arrays you need more bandwidth on the bus to handle the load.

SAS is slated to hit 12Gb/s in it's next generation. That's per controller. SSD speeds are over 500MB/s (4Gb/s) already. Create two arrays of these and let them talk and you've killed a PCIe 2.0 controller. And that's not even taking SSD on PCIe's into account, which have hit the GB/s (upwards of 10 Gb/s) per card mark.

And then there's networking. 100 Gbps fiber is going to need PCIe 3.0.

Video cards...not so much. Not yet.

[Fat Tone]

There's nothing quite like assembling a new computer with your son on Boxing Day and discovering you ordered the wrong F***ing motherboard. Anyone else notice the lack of graphics connectors on my motherboard description above?

[Evildead666]

There are multiple versions of the F1A75 apparently, Pro, Deluxe etc, and most of them have Vga connectors aat least.

Do a google search for Asus F1A75 and look at what pics you get.
Most of them have Vga connectors.

Which version of the F1A75 did you get ?

[Fat Tone]

There are multiple versions of the F1A75 apparently, Pro, Deluxe etc, and most of them have Vga connectors aat least.

Do a google search for Asus F1A75 and look at what pics you get.
Most of them have Vga connectors.

Which version of the F1A75 did you get ?

I think what happened is I researched it on Dabs.com but went to Ebuyer.com to place the order and didn't spot the difference. Sadly none of the options on Ebuyer have the gfx connectors so I can't arrange a swap.

Now he has the ASUS 4850 out of my main rig and its doing very nicely. The slowest component is the 320GB HDD that came out of a laptop. I'll replace that at some point but at the moment there are no complaints

The ironic thing is my main rig has a core i5 2500 but the mobo would support the cpus with integrated gfx.

[Fat Tone]

My XFX HD 6850 arrived today, so its not all bad

Now the question is who gets it? Luke is the gamer, I just need office and fast video encoding.

[Tjalfe]

I can't believe it, you took something beautiful and then you went on and ruined it.
Windows doesn't deserve such a machine.

He did say gaming machine .. which Linux still can't compete with

[Elie]

He did say gaming machine .. which Linux still can't compete with

Exactly