HI guys im working on a poor core 2 duo that really needs to be replaced and given some of the challenges here i got something new to aim for then "ready for games for next few years" basically... im debating if i splurge for one of those 1000$ intel 6 core 12 thread processors, or just stick with a 6 core amd/4 core 8 thread intel and throw the extra money into a second (or third) video card for sli/crossfire using cuda/whatever the ati equivelent was
the hyper threading can help to some extent since most my programs will end up compiling to something along the lines of mov eax,[edi+ecx] table lookups not long raw calculations like xor rol ect that you would see in encoding or encryption. (and not to mention i tend to have 4 browsers 2 movies a game and 3 compiler programs open at once half the time hehe)
i wont be overclocking too much...will keep it stable and expected life long..., but will probably convert over to water (or mineral oil) cooling to squeeze out some more cycles.
as much as i wish i could have more then 3 gigs (i use windows for best game compatability and out of habit shoosh) some of the stuff i would use would break in 64 bit... debuggers being a big one. yet if i threw 2 1 gig video cards to work sli that leaves very little remaining for the OS. probably go dual boot for the compatability side.
basically im asking what my bottleneck's would truly be if i had the 6 core intel overclocked with 12 gigs ram 3 good video cards in sli if my motherboards chipset didnt suck... if i couldnt even use the third card because no motherboard has that much throughput...i want to know that stuff.
oh and i dont plan to purchase anything for at least a few months.