Upon further reading on the integreted RAM controller in the AMD cpus it seems that extreme low latency DDR is the best possible and DDR2 would indeed either not work or be completly useless.

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of truth

So while your nForce4 will have PCI-e, it won’t have DDR2, I’m quite sure. If it did, you’d get no real performance gain, and you’d be wasting a lot of money because DDR2 is very expensive.

Athlon 64 4000+
nForce 4 chipset board with PCI-e, DDR2 and SATA2 (SATA2 is a mabey, more likely this tech wont be available till mid next year)
>2GB DDR2 (hopefully latencies drop like a bitch, as the 64bit CPUs with the integrated RAM controlers really really love low latency)
6800 GT (or Ultra) PCI-e with 512MB GDDR3 ram

everything else is superfulus but when segates 400GB SATA drives come out i would love to run 3 or more of them in RAID5.

I don’t know who would buy your 5900 though. For $175-200US you can get a 6600GT of a X700XT, both of which perform better in, well, all situations. Nevertheless, if you’re a cunsomer whore, there’s nothing I can do to sway your decision.

I wasn’t thinking straight about frame rates and GF2 vs 5900. Technically the framerates didn’t increase nearly at all actually. But that is because these days its not about getting 100 fps but rather getting around 60 with the most detail and extra options (FSAA, AF) turned on. Kind of a balancing act to see how much visual splendor you can get at a smooth and stable framerate. I forget that while I ran UT2003 back on the GF2 at about 50fps and now run it at about 60fps, back then was 1024×768 now its 1280×1024 with 4x fsaa & AF.

Also I must restate I am a consumer whore. I am not looking for a card to simply run games well. I want a card that makes games scream for mercy. And that will always be the top of the line card for whatever generation we are in. Its always $4-500 price bracket as well. This generation is a proven performer and huge increase. Plus I can still sell my GF 5900 at a decent price right now, by next generation I wouldn’t be able to give it to a hobo.

The way I see it, upgrading your video card every year really isn’t that terrible of an investment. I could resell my 5900 right now for about $175-200. That’s about a 50% return on my money (I bought it at $399). So when I go and buy the next top of the line video card for another $400 I am really only spending 200 new dollars. This is like buying a new card every 2 years and spending the $400. But instead every single year you have a top of the line video card. If you saved just $5 a week you would have more than that $200 each year to upgrade. Makes sense to me, plus I want to see HL2 in all its blazing glory.