You can "easily" change the button positions in Gnome: Open terminal, type "gconf-editor", go to /apps/metacity/general, and edit "button_layout" key value. "menu:minimize,maximize,close" is the Windows-like layout, IIRC.

Steam and HL2 work fine on Linux with WINE.

So, do we get Phenom II X4 955 vs Intel i5 750 here?

Have fun lagging behind, AC!! LOL!!1!

Hmm-ho, again thanks for the reply. I'll again address your points by numbering.

1. Good for you. Did you really need the quad core? What are you using the computer for? Did you forget the longevity of LGA 775, where you can still do the same thing? Doesn't make sense to me, but CPUs are readily available.

2. I'd suggest taking a hard look at CPU architecture development. By a friend, I happen to know something about it, and the pin layout (corresponding to power and data ports) is actually very important. If you don't think that AM3 was outdated when it came out, I'd suggest doing some research. This is not meant to offensive in any way, the CPU design just means that the pin layout has to live with the optimal physical construction.

3. Your latter point about AMD's big change strikes true to me too, but as a solid-state physicist, I recognize the realities. AM3 is old now, and going past it requires changing the socket, or hampering the real performance just to be backwards-compatible.

For your musings, Intel already made the thing, and it got good acceptance.

Again, I'm not an Intel buff by any means, but as a computer building enthusiast, IMO they have been taking the more sensible way, dropping old crud and pushing aggressively forward.

Yeah, and you just chose the CPUs no-one in the "know" would buy. 980X is for the AnalWare and equivalent horrendously overpriced prebuilts and the few stupid people they can snare just by being the fastest around here (which is probably true); i5 and i3 dual cores can't compete with AMD's offerings.

Can we go back to i5 quads vs Phenom II X4?

Yeah, I agree. Whoever modded up the GP doesn't know a thing about the issue.

[citation needed]

Very good points. If you can follow me without quotes, I'll try to address them linearly:

1. This point about the price /delta/ (nice word, I've never used it in this context) has been put to the past by the current pricing schemes. You don't pay much extra for a quad vs. a similar dual core (architectures and all in the equation). Do the math (I have done), and you'll end up in the negative side, if you go for something that you are really planning to upgrade in 2 years.

2. Very well, that's the kind of math I've been doing for other people too for some years now. AM3 was outdated when it was introduced, because if you really want to get the best out of a new CPU architecture, you better make a socket that can match it for the best. Hence the two new sockets from Intel in a short time, after we thought that LGA 775 was never going to go away.

3. Repetition of 2, but AMD must know that the next bigger step ("tock" in Intel's language) must mean a big change in the architecture. They can keep the next generation of CPUs compatible with the older boards, but that hampers the innovations they can make in the designs, and thus it probably lowers the performance. I don't trust either of the CPU manufacturers to stay on their PR-published road maps after a year or two, and thus I plan my builds so that I can get most of them out in the period they are supposed to deliver (for example) gaming performance for me, and then they are retired for other tasks.

As a side note, I too loved Socket A, with my water-cooled Athlon M 2500+ running at 3 GHz just fine :)

Blast out 6 cores has a lot different meaning than blasting out 4 cores. Please check out the tech Intel has in place to deliver good performance for a single-threaded app (overclocking the core on which the thread is running on). You build a straw man there: I never claimed that more cores would be worse if more cores would be needed, and neither did I claim that less cores is better if all the rest is the same. For your supposed quote about X6 vs. i5 vs. Phenom, I never said anything like that, another straw man. LTR.

Yes, the US is a bit different compared to Europe. Still, you might show some substantiation for those 2X performance vs. 8X prices.

Ah, again I must apologize in this thread... Finnish Ultimate fighting tournament finals on TV, and a bit drunken wife on the phone...

Apart from the obvious typos in the proper reply, I was "burned" by AMD socket 939. It didn't matter for me, as like I've said, I don't build computers for that upgradeability. I feel sorry for a couple for a couple of my mates who did the worse mistake by buying socket 754, which was pretty much dead once it was introduced. The lesson learned: Do not trust any platform to be for upgrades in the next two years.

That's because the price you'll pay for two CPU is more than just getting a good one that'll carry you through the period. And you are limiting yourself to old tech: Who knows when AMD introduced AM4 socket, which is not backwards-compatible?

Ah, forgot to ask about the PSUs you are using... I've had a cheap one breaking down everything including the floppy drive in my comp, so after that I've only bought good PSUs from brands like Corsair, Cooler Master, and OCZ. No aging problems there, really (and that includes many many more comps than I've owned, as I've build for other people, too).

Interesting... Why the high-end mobo? Those cost substantially more than mid-range. For the other parts, your upgrade path is pretty much what I have been recommending too for those who want to do some upgrades: Don't upgrade the CPU, it's waste of money. If RAM is cheap at the moment, buy a bit more than you really need, otherwise buy more when it's cheaper (RAM prices at the moment are outrageous in Europe).

I'm not sure where you got that 2 years figure though, as my current comp is 4 years old and just about to be replaced, it was high-mid-range when I bought it (so not too expensive, and bang-for-the-buck is good), and the upgrades have been a new HDD and going for 2 extra Gb of RAM (because I need to use Windows 7 for Visual Studio work now, and naturally I used it for some gaming too, alongside with my original Ubuntu+Wine setup).

Your last paragraph is rather rephrasing common sense. Don't buy the latest stuff, as there's always a premium there. Wait a while, and the prices come down.