I've been out of the scene for a long while now, anyone care to fill me in?

[DETN8R]

So I've been out of the computer/casemod world for awhile now. I grew up a bit and took on a more expensive hobby(four wheeling, in fact I sold a P4 which I won in a casemod contest to pay for my lift kit) and I really want to get back into it. Computers have been a passion of mine for years now but I've been content with the last one I've built for a good 3yrs now.
I currently run:
AMD 64 3500+ on a DFI Lan Party mobo with 1gb of ram. with a water cooling system
I think its way out of date now so I just have some questions:


Whats the latest and greatest mobo?
Whats the latest and greatest processor?
whats the latest and greatest graphics card?
Whats the latest and greatest memory?
Whos the top dog in the modding community?
I remember when Paul went on Tech TV to show off his matrix case.

I used to follow Pauls work back on the old Pheaton forums, anyone remember pheaton? Its been awhile.

[simon275]

Everyone has there own opinion of what the greatest is.

Baiscally the latest and greatest for cpu is most expensive desktop proc from intel, the most expensive NVIDIA gpu, there are a number of good memory and mobo makers look around and see what others use and recommend.

Define top dog?

[Zephik]

Whats the latest and greatest mobo? I'm actually really liking most motherboards from Gigabyte these days. They have quite a few "customer choice awards" on newegg. They also seem to be the highest and most rated as well.

Whats the latest and greatest processor? Intel is king of the hill at the moment. AMD came out with the phenom but it still couldn't compare to the core 2 duo I believe.

Best average person proc? Intel Core 2 Duo.

Best enthusiast proc? Intel Quad Core.

whats the latest and greatest graphics card? Hmm. I think the 8800's are still on top, but the 9 series is out now too. I THINK the 8800's are still better though? Not sure. But nVidia is on top at the moment.

Whats the latest and greatest memory? DDR3 baby!

Whos the top dog in the modding community? Paul Capello of course! ;)

oh yea... and Defyant is back with another mod by the way... (plugs ears as nerds all over the world scream like little girls at a backstreet boys concert)

[Zephik]

Also, the latest "craze" seems to be "ultra portable" laptops. The market is booming with them at the moment. Asus Eee PC is the most desired right now, but Dell just came out with their Mini Inspiron 9 series. (which I'm currently looking at for purchase). Think of them more as an accessory to a computer though because they can't really do too much aside from the basics, which is why Dell is offering a deal where when you buy a certain brand computer from them they will give you a good discount on the mini 9 series.

You'll notice that most of them are equipped with the new Intel Atom processor. Not very powerful really, but very small in every aspect you can think of. Thermal, Voltage, Price, Size, etc.

I've also heard a rumor that a dual core atom might be a possibility sooner than later. Thats just a rumor though I believe. In any case, it will happen eventually given some time.

[DETN8R]

Thanks for the replies guys.

[Trace]

I do believe the 4870 X2 is the king of graphics card market.