Its Been Such a Long Time - UPGRADE

After 6 years of gaming on my trusty dual core AMD processor, built to play Supreme Commander, I found it was now time to do a real upgrade.  No, not to the hi-end performance $1000+ console gamers think we do.  For me, I'm all about best bang for the buck.  I'm talking midrange. That all I'd ever budget for.  A few considerations this time:

Saying goodbye to AMD
I have been a long time fan and user of AMD's processors.  But the use of higher voltage, greater need for cooling, and overall performance hit, have been taking a toll on them.  It was time I try my first Intel purchase, since the Gateway 2000 486 I had taken a loan out to purchase.  AMD appealed to me, simply because it was cheaper.  And, they worked well.  They still are both to a certain extent.   But I now have other considerations I didn't care about when I was a broke student.  AMD will be back in my life.  On the high end, they are coming back.  But for my goals, my budget, not right now.  The winner;  an Intel i5 quad core.  Memory goes from, DDR2 to DDR3.

State of Solidness
I've already put in a SSD into my media system, to accelerate my TV watching.  I know they will help even the oldest of systems.  So it was a pure logic to put one in my new rig.  Wow, the Win 7 logo doesn't even have time to finish :)  Went with the 250GB.  People should buy this, if they are looking to upgrade, even if its an older rig. Just remember you'll still want a TB+ as a secondary drive for all that data.

Next gen consoles
I've already written a bit on this in the preliminary days.  It is a reality PC gaming performance wise have been in a rut, because developers simply did not bother to push the limits.  While the limits still will not be pushed, the next gen at least "raised the bar".  My old system would not have competed.  I plan to meet that bar, with a video GPU upgrade in another 2 years.

Keep whats old:
My case, power supply, Windows 7 license, and platter Hard Drive for data, all will stay for now.  Sorry IDE ROM drive, you're out.  Its okay, you can hangout with the floppy and Zip drives I still have in storage.  My video card was the one thing I did upgrade a few times.  So, I'll keep what I have (an AMD oddly enough), as its not that old.

Final note:  Its easier to upgrade a PC then a Wii.