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greenmedic88 on 24 June 2008
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That scalability for the PC platform works both ways. Since performance is largely hardware based, and is a constantly moving target due to the commercial aspect of PC gaming (based upon hardware upgrades), it also means that today's premium performance (and priced) components will be significantly cheaper (and less premium) 6-12 months into the future.

The result being by avoiding the pitfall of upgrading to the most current (more accurately, the best) component options, you can easily purchase a higher performance to price configuration.

But it is not inaccurate to say that a $3000 configuration will see a lower performance to price benefit even six months later. Buying a dual SLI GTX280 with the most current Core 2 Extreme processor would be the basis of your $3000 machine, very likely to be matched in less than two years by a pair of mid level cards (like the future version of the current Radeon 4850) and a mid level CPU costing less than half as much.

This is more or less why optimal configurations are best suited for productivity and work purposes where every bit of processing speed can offset overall costs of a project in terms of the length of time it takes to complete.

Of course when we're talking about optimal configurations for the purpose of gaming, it means you can play more competitively online due to faster frame rates (more likely constrained by your connection, hosting server and related lag), and higher resolution (to see more fine detail in the distance) which really doesn't mean much unless you're a professional gamer. Everyone who's ever built a $3000 rig and is a competitive pro gamer, raise your hand. Not too many. Generally, that's not the justification for such a computer.

Beyond that, PC gamers as a whole tend to be tinkerers, much like the gear heads who build engines and work on their own cars. To a lot of tinkerers, building a rig, optimizing it and adjusting the configurations is about as much fun as playing games on them.

As for waiting for components; just like computers themselves, you can ALWAYS wait another six months for better prices and higher performance whether than be for CPUs, GPUs, RAM, or just about any other component.

8800GT prices have already dropped on NewEgg. The 1GB version by Palit going for $150 after rebate. A 512MB by ASUS for $130 after rebate. BFG Tech for $150.