Been thinking about how to invest in order to gain a major impact to my gaming experience & here are my thoughts.
1) Graphic's card - Like the idea of a Dual GPU & seeing as I tend to upgrade every other generation the G80 looks appealing in that it will be a native Dual Core & fast at that. The only thing which makes me hesitate is the fact is it is not using unified shaders , I will wait & see how the R600 fares against it.
2) CPU / MOBO / RAM - Gut feel is to go Core Duo but if you look at the reviews when playing games at 1280 & above the bottle neck is still the graphics card & so while there are still no major titles out there which benefit from dual core CPU technology my A64 @ 2.7 Ghz is still fit for purpose. But when my XP-M starts to flounder the next purchase has to be a Core duo E6600 & its over clock time.
3) HD - I am playing with the thought of going Raptor for my OS & Aps & then Large SATA2 for storage but not until my existing RAID has reached capacity which is unlikely to happen for another six months or so.

I think a64s still cut the mustard for gaming atm, cheap and powerful.

No idea about gfx cards these days but i'll probably just go with one monster card when I can afford it.

And i need to double my RAM, only at 1gb atm.

Very tempted to buy an X2 4800 for about 220 quid, means i have to stay with same mobo + gfx for a while, but that's ok for now.

Then get a nf4 mobo later when i swap to pci-e

then step 3 is to go to DDR-2 and new type of CPU in mid 2007

The way everything is going i cant be arsed to upgrade for some time. Games that should run like a dream run at 20 fps just because the optimiser couldnt be arsed to do his job. Or there is some driver issues.
Then add to this vista and dx10 and how the first generation of cards that can do the latest dx always suffer from bad performers and are quickly replaced with ones that cope better with the latest dx functions.
That and the fact that really there are no games coming out for the pc that i just cant wait for and the fact that dx10 might well be vista exclusive. I am a pc gamer threw and threw but i aint up for spending a fortune again and still having games run like you have a ps2.
To sum it all up i am sick of the bullshit in the pc market, pull you ****ing fingers out and give us performance that actually rivals the hardware we have

We're on the cusp of a massive increase in PC quality imo. It's been dodgy for a while, but I'm pretty sure we'll soon be in another sweet spot.

Just like the last massive increase in graphical quality, it looks look CryTek will be leading the way again. As a PC gamer I can't wait for the christmas and 2007.

You can tell someone got his xbox360 this week.

the rPrice drop is a right kick-in-the-nuts for me. i payed £220 for a x2 4200+ not two months ago .

as far as upgrades go.

next mouth i want a X-fi to replace the on board sound.

I'd love a new dx10 gfx card, but if I get a new Gfx card, I'll have to have a new Mobo too as I'll be going Pci-e.

I would like a WS monitor, so i can dump this sh!tty 60ms one.

I have been saying the same thing for months reo and yes it was one of the reasons i got my 360 but the main one being dead rising.
Dont forget if you get a dx10 card you will want to get vista to run dx10 or it will be a waste [unless m.s make it so dx10 works on other operating systems]

I should have mentioned that the GFX card would be based upon 2nd gen DX10 tech e.g. G81 due to the fact the G80 will not be using 65nm silicon & which with some luck repeat the old 7800 / 7900 price performance jump. On a side note though Ryan there will not be a rig which will show any visible superiority to you set-up for some time mate. I thought you upgrade path would be more sound card / monitor based if at all.

from what I read, there is no reason DX10 will not work on XP, its just microsoft holding back.

but by time i can afford a new GFX card vista will be a year old and i'll happly jump ship.

but all this is irellivent coz come xmass we will all sell our computes/360 and join the church of Wii.

some time in about 3-4months, Full new system + widescreen monitor.