Hello everyone. This is my first post here. I need your help. I don't know when to buy a new computer. My desire is Alienware's Area-51 ALX. It has Quad Core 3.0GHz (overclocked to 3.33GHz) processor, 4GB of memory (32bit Windows Vista Ultimate) and latest Dual NVIDIA video cards with SLI enabled. But I understand, that PC revolution is close and sooner or later there will computers appear with 45nano-meter quad core processors for example with 5.0GHz and 16GB memory (with 64bit Windows Vista). But when will all this stuff appear and when will it be available to buy? For how long my Area-51 ALX will support the latest DirectX 10 games? I think betwene 2-5 years. But the problem is, that I want to buy a computer for at least 10 years and I want it to support all latest games all this time. Could you tell me your opinion about how long Area-51 ALX will support all latest games and should I buy it or I should wait for a computer to come out with 64bit Windows and the specs I've mentioned? When this revolution will be done? Thanks!
There's always something bigger and better, so if you wait, you'll never buy. As far as a ten year lifespan, that's asking a bit much. Ten years ago, Windows 95 ruled the desktop and 100MHz was the bleeding edge. For a gamer, at most, I'd say a box, without any upgrades would suffice for about 3 years. Video card and RAM upgrades could boost this up to about 6 tops, but that's about it. You'll likely be hard pressed to have your system produce acceptable framerates at a decent resolution, not to mention find a high-end compatible video card. Alienware is a tad expensive, and unless you're dead-set on having one, you should consider other options. Dell XPS line, Maingear, and AVADirect seem to be pretty good. I'm not claiming these are facts, but looking at the changes that have happened over the past 10 years, I do think you'll see changes to the hardware that negate certain upgrade paths.
Thank you very much Big B! Your info on relatad to Alienware sites was very-very helpful, aspecially MainGear! Can you tell me why I only see E6700 processor for DB-R, is it 4 cores extreme processor? Or if it's missing (not in stock) is there any other components, that are missing? Can you please call and ask them for me? I can't do this, because I'm not living in USA. I need you to tell me if there any other components missing. P.S. What do you think about PC revolution that I've mentioned... the 64bit Windows and stuff?
The E series Core 2's are dual-core. If it's Q or QX it's a quad core, with the QX being the Extreme version. Windows Vista is the first version of Windows to offer 64-bit out the door. While a 64-bit version of XP is there, there wasn't a lot of support for it. If you're going to go with a 64-bit Windows OS, Vista would be what you want. Now that there's the 64-bit Windows out of the gate, I think it's a safe bet to get in terms of support.
