i7 920 or 860?

[87dtna]

Well, you asked.

Anyway, I don't think that PCI-E 16x 2.0 will become "obsolete" with the introduction of 3.0, since 2.0 didn't render gen 1 obsolete.

1366 has a long road ahead.

Bottom line is a single 16x 2.0 slot on an 1156 board will do just as good as a single 16x slot on a 1366 board and will be obsolete at the same time!

On the memory thing, I simply disagree. If 4gb is enough now, and is looking fine for anything in the near future (~1year?), then 8gb should be plenty good for atleast 2-3 years. Only hardcore gamers and whatnot will need more, and in 3 years 4gb sticks will be much more prevalent I'm betting. And we've already established that he's not a hard core gamer so 8gb will be good for even longer than that.

 

[bomberboysk]

Bottom line is a single 16x 2.0 slot on an 1156 board will do just as good as a single 16x slot on a 1366 board and will be obsolete at the same time!

On the memory thing, I simply disagree. If 4gb is enough now, and is looking fine for anything in the near future (~1year?), then 8gb should be plenty good for atleast 2-3 years. Only hardcore gamers and whatnot will need more, and in 3 years 4gb sticks will be much more prevalent I'm betting.

Thing is, still a good number of people who would want to run a pcie card other than a gpu. Raid controllers, network adapters, sound cards(yes, a pcie x1 soundcard will drop you to an x8 on pcie_1 on most boards), etc. For memory, 4gb is starting to not be enough, gaming doesnt need more but many other uses do(video editing, sound editing, photo editing, cad work, etc).

 

[87dtna]

Thing is, still a good number of people who would want to run a pcie card other than a gpu. Raid controllers, network adapters, sound cards(yes, a pcie x1 soundcard will drop you to an x8 on pcie_1 on most boards), etc. For memory, 4gb is starting to not be enough, gaming doesnt need more but many other uses do(video editing, sound editing, photo editing, cad work, etc).

Hmm, well my cheap asrock mobo does not list anywhere on newegg or ASrock's site about if you use a 1x slot it downgrades PCIe x16 to 8x.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157171

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=P55 Pro

Probably because the second PCIe X16 slot is only at 4x to begin with, so there's spare lanes to be had. If thats the case, than I suggest the board I have! lol