Expert advice, the ultimate gaming machine?
 

What would be a cutting edge ultra PC for gaming nowadays?

Am just daydreaming about upgrading.

Anyway, whats the cutting edge, money no object(within reason) gaming machine that one can buy now?

cheers,

Well, for CPU the best thing you can buy is probably the Athlon FX-55.
It will cost you an arm and a leg, but it kicks ass.

Well, you COULD buy it, but you would pay between two and four times what it was worth. Build your own.

List of Current "Dream Parts":
AMD Athlon 64 (Socket 939) - I'm unaware of what is currently the "best" 64, so I can't point my finger at one for you.
ASUS mobo (again, not extremely with the latest) with SLI and PCIE support
2x BFG Geforce 6800 Ultra OC SLI cards
2gigs or more of Corsair XMS RAM
2x Western Digital Raptors for OS and games
1x Western Digital 400Gb w/SATA for media
1x 3.5" Floppy w/ media card reader
Sony 16x dual layer DVD+/-RW
Plextor 16x single layer DVD+/-RW
PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 510 Express/SLI PSU

Cooling and cases all depend on personal preference. Air vs. water, aluminum, vs. steel, fashion vs. function, etc. so making any recommendations on those would be kinda pointless.

Im drooling, thanks guys,

Whats happening on the Pentium front, are they going to launch a Pentium V?

Some day. Still, if you are building your own an equivalent AMD chip will save you atleast $100 for the "latest & greatest" CPU. Sorry for not being able to give you an exact spec on the best mobo and CPU for Socket 939, but I haven't been home to pick up the previous two issues of MaximumPC.

I don't believe there is "ultimate" in computer world. Sure, "ultimate" for a week, two weeks, a month or a couple of months. The industry is moving so rapidly us average Joes can't keep up. Unfortunately we are all (most of us anyways) limited by a budget.

I think a P4EE that runs at like 3.8/4.0GHz out of the box, cooled below ambient temperature and over clocked to hell would kick ass :) If only money was no object...