Next gen gaming is coming - Anyone have a next gen plan for their PC?

[spikexp]

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

AMDs 9000 series cards? What about their 8000 series cards? Why jump that?

Mobile/OEM only for the 8000. They decided to skip it for desktop.

[Urzu 7]

What does OEM mean? If it means original equipment manufacturers, I don't get it, as desktop GPUs can be OEM. Plus, I don't have a very good understanding of what OEM products are, so maybe that is why I'm confused.

[spikexp]

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

What does OEM mean? If it means original equipment manufacturers, I don't get it, as desktop GPUs can be OEM. Plus, I don't have a very good understanding of what OEM products are, so maybe that is why I'm confused.

In this case, it's computer manufacturer (Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, etc.).
AMD only make them available to those OEM.

[Urzu 7]

So don't expect much with Radeon 8000s? The real deals will be the 9000 series?

[spikexp]

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

So don't expect much with Radeon 8000s? The real deals will be the 9000 series?

Exactly.
8000 are close to the 7000 series.

[King Lycan]

And they will conflict with the name of the AMD FX line I believe.

[Vexx]

I usually let the games drive my upgrade cycles. When I actually buy a game that stresses my PC out, then I'll start upgrading (e.g. went from 2GB to 8GB because of Skyrim, etc).

I tend to upgrade piecemeal though updating the motherboard often drives RAM and CPU upgrades ... and those motherboard tend to be 'transition' connectors ... though my latest motherboard doesn't even have IDE ports.

I've stuck with AMD for the most part. I've got a Antec Skeleton rig (yeah the pimpy lab not-a-box). It is really damned easy to change parts out and has that huge ginormous fan for cooling.

At the moment, I need to do some hard drive replacing/condensing ... too many under-sized drives. I have a feeling my next upgrades will involve more power for less wattage types of changes. And typically, my parts get recycled down to the server boxes and guest machines.

[Dhomochevsky]

My father managed to trash the only good part in my PC (a GTX580) by somehow spraying it with beer. Don't ask.. I have no idea either.

Soo, I'm dumping the PC all together and going for a gaming notebook.
Reason is, I'm at home 1 or 2 days a week at best and in some hotel otherwise.

As far as I remember those things were pretty damn expensive, got hot like lava on your lap, and have a battery life of 15 minutes.

That was 5 years ago though, so I hope they've evolved into something more worthwhile in the meantime.

[sa547]

Originally Posted by Dhomochevsky

Soo, I'm dumping the PC all together

Donate it instead. Didn't like the idea of seeing a used black rig in a dumpster.

As for gaming laptops, I find those from Alienware too fancy and expensive, so you'll have to pick a laptop that's good for work and play, with very good cooling. Of course if you play, you'll have to keep the power adapter plugged in.

@Vexx: there's still the USB adapters for IDE drives, and PCI cards. I use them because I keep those old yet functional IDE drives for emergency backups.

As for me, now that I got a 250gb drive added, I'll save up for an 8gb DDR3 kit. I find it surprising that 4gb wasn't enough for games now, having become the baseline minimum.

[blaze0041]

Originally Posted by Dhomochevsky

Soo, I'm dumping the PC all together and going for a gaming notebook.
Reason is, I'm at home 1 or 2 days a week at best and in some hotel otherwise.

As far as I remember those things were pretty damn expensive, got hot like lava on your lap, and have a battery life of 15 minutes.

That was 5 years ago though, so I hope they've evolved into something more worthwhile in the meantime.

Originally Posted by sa547

As for gaming laptops, I find those from Alienware too fancy and expensive, so you'll have to pick a laptop that's good for work and play, with very good cooling. Of course if you play, you'll have to keep the power adapter plugged in.

If you need to go for a gaming laptop, I suggest the Clevo-based gaming laptops. They're not as fancy in the looks department compared to Alienware or others, but they are really good value in my opinion (though price will vary depending on who's making it, such as Origin PC or Horize). As far as I'm aware, these are the most customisable laptops on the market. Best advice I can give is to shop around (down here for example, Logical Blue One sell Horize-badged Clevo laptops, generally at a lower price than Horize themselves)