Long term gaming system?

Really quickly coz i got an appt to goto in a sec but look at AMD platforms as they have less of a history with screwing consumers when it comes to upgradability.
790GX board, Phenom II chip, 4MB RAM and a 4870 will do you for a while and you are looking at about £600 to put all that together.

Intel are the current leaders in terms of performance but the chip thats doing it for them, the i7 required a whole new mobo / RAM combo with an upgrade fee (from a C2x) of about £400 just for the pleasure of running the chip. Last i read the next chip they release will be a different socket again...requiring a new mobo with a different socket.

We already know i5 is a different socket. LGA 11xx something or other. The X3 720 BE is supposed be one of AMD's best current chips. Definitely worth a look

Now although AMD is good, I've been told been told by several people to go with Intel as far as gaming needs. Although I understand your point from an upgrade perspective for the future.

Yea...my response was to your original question about longeivity. If you would have asked whats the best gaming platform then its i7 all the way baby.

The above build is ok now, Q6600 is a nice clocker but its far surpassed by C2Q, PII and i7. Imo its not worth getting Vs a PII 720.
The 8800, again is ok but cant realy hold its own with the more modern games like Crysis and GTA IV. Step up to the 260 or a 4870 if you want it to last.

As with everything you get what you pay for, if you go too cheap now then you will need to upgrade before long.

Thanks for your input. These are the kinds of opinions that I was looking for. I've been trying to compare alot of these components which is touch without actual hands on use so it's all based on those that have. Thanks again and keep em coming

depends how you define future... I guess 1-2 years maybe.. but then they're going to throw something new which would require a newer mobo (eg: 60nm to 45nm mobo support for C2D). They will always find ways to take your money

Ok, this is a bit over the top I'm sure and too expensive for me as well. I pulled it from www.mypowerpc.com and it comes out at around $2800 but it seems pretty sweet and along with what's being said. I'm open to suggestions to that are just as functional, have longevity but would make it more affordable. I've also checked newegg to see what prices were there to compare and that brought it down about $400.

What I've been looking at so far include:

Power supply: 850W coolermaster Real power pro-quad SLI ready (thinking about Thermaltake RU 850w with one large 12v rail as well)

CPU: Intel Core i7-940 2.93 GHz 8M L2 Cache LGA1366

Cooling fan: Asetek liquid cooling system *might move away from this

motherboard: Asus P6T Intel x58 SLI/CrossfireX Mainboard triple channel

DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/eSATA, GbLAN, USB2.0

Memory: 6GB Corsair

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 x2 1.7GB 16x PCIe

Hard drive: 500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM

Sound: Creative Labs X-FI XtremeGamer 24-Bit PCI

OP: Vista 64 bit

As far as the I5 is concerned, they are going to be for the mainstream desktop market, and will only support dual channel ddr3 and not the triple channel ddr3 the I7 suppports, they are based on the same microarchitecture as the I7 but not as fast or robust!! Here is a link to the data:http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel-Core-i5-to-Debut-in-Q3-Along-with-New-Chipsets-104477.shtml

The reason I say go with the GTX 285 and get another for SLI is with 2 GTX 295's in quad sli it isn't as much of a performance pop as you would think.....something about the quad sli stuff drivers or whatnot isn't handling it as well as you would think, kind of stubles in some areas....2 gtx 285 on the other hand will freakin SCREAM!!! and it does out performe a single gtx 295. Perhaps in the future they might get the drivers lined out, but from what I have researched it's not worth it right now and if your not playing on a 30+ inch monitor then you don't need it!

Finding it. Any other suggestions from people of what they would build?

Most people don't have $3000+ to spend on a system. Buying the most expensive tech you can is not "cool", it just makes terrible economic sense. How are you going to buy all those games you want to play on this monster if you spend all your money on the PC? What happens when the next greatest thing comes out 9 months from now and you no longer have the newest thing out there? Are you going to tear all the parts out of your board and get the new ones just for bragging rights?

$3000-$5000 isn't "real performance", it is overkill. In a few months the same system will probably be hundreds of dollars cheaper or there will be a new and improved model that uses less energy. You do have to pay to power the thing so it may be smart to factor energy efficiency into the equation.