I built a new machine (basically just so I could play Crysis). I'm currently running at conservatively overclocked speeds on stock voltage:
- Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 95W Edition @3.2GHz (9x356FSB)
- Tuniq Tower 120
- EVGA nForce 680i SLi
- BFG GeForce 8800 Ultra OC
- OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Reaper HPC 5-5-5-16 @ DDR1068
- Western Digital Raptor 150GB
- Corsair HX 620W PSU
- Antec P182
- Dell 2407 WFP
- Logitech G9
- Windows Vista 64bit SP1
I can max out BF2 and Source engine games at 1920x1200 with solid 60fps+. Crysis DX10 mode @1680x1050 high settings runs @~35fps. Maybe I need 2 8800 Ultras?
I still have my old machine running as a file server, I think the graphics card is consuming more electricity than is sensible for something I leave switched on. It consists of:
- Pentium 4 (Northwood) 2.8GHz @ 3.15GHz
- Asus P4C800-E
- Corsair TwinX PC-3200 2x512mb
- GeForce 7800 GS 512mb
- IBM DeskStar 180GXP, Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB
- Seasonic M12 500W PSU
- Cooler Master ATC-410 SX1, Panaflo fans throughout
- Windows XP SP2
Next job is 4x500gb drives in RAID 5 and test out Windows Server 2008.
I recommend checking out TVersity for streaming media to PS3/XBox360. It's the way forward, especially if you have the horsepower for HD.