How long will it be viable? Well quite a reasonable length of time. Most new games aren't pushing the envelope and PC requirements have remained fairly static and will likely remain so for a while. I have friends who still game with their 7900GTX GPUs and they are perfectly happy with what they have. They just want to play and they don't care for increased eye candy. They won't upgrade until they are forced to, which will probably be sometime this year. That isn't too bad, 5 years for a GPU upgrade. I would say given the fact that the 5670 is up to date it'll be good for at least 5 years.

When you say life to you mean in terms of length or in terms of ability? Because you can have both for those amounts of money. Of coruse comparable to a console it means that you will not be playing all the games on max. For instance, the 360 and the PS3 would not be able to handle SC2 on max, but you will be able to run them at comparable graphics.

The whole point of having an up to date PC system is to be able to play any games released for the PC; my current gaming system can play games on a similar level as the HD consoles, but it can’t handle the upcoming games I desire to play. If you can’t play the games you want to play on your current PC you can not say that it is still a viable gaming platform.

So let me get this straight, you are complaining because you would have to pay more to get a better experience? With your $500 any game that comes out on the consoles and the PC you will be able to play, end of story. On lower settings you will also be able to play games that the consoles will never run, but not on max settings. So you want to be able to play games which consistently blow the console games out of the water technologically, for 5 years on consistent tech?

I am sorry but you may have to make yourself a little more clear because from what I am undestanding you are being extremely EXTREMELY unreasonable.

No, my original point was that PCs have advantages but they have disadvantages as well; and cost is one of the core disadvantages of playing games on your PC, because you need to spend a lot of money up front or regularly spend money to upgrade your system. The retort to this point was that a gaming PC was cheap and that you could buy a viable gaming PC for $400, and spending $1,500 was no longer necessary to own a gaming PC.

Buying a gaming console for $250 to $500 will ensure that any game that is released for that console (even 5 or 6 years later) will still run on the hardware; spending $500 on a PC will ensure that in a couple of years games will be released that you simply can not play.

Yes but the $400 or $500 will play any game that is multiplatform until the end of the console's life. So in the end you get the same bang for the buck, plus whatever technically superior games egt released on the PC which you can play because they are scaled down. I mean yeah, I once bought a PC for $600 and that only lasted me 4 years or so until I was reduced to playing all games on minimum, but I was still able to play them. Also as stated before, there are many many savings. As I said you could have saved over $450 dolalrs if you had bought the Square Eniz/Eidos bundle from steam.

I'm in a similar situation with my Geforce 7800 and Athlon X2 3800 , but I didn't spend $500 in 2005 to build that system. There is no argument that you can build a $500 gaming system, and I don't argue that you can build a gaming system that lasts 5 years, but you certainly can not build a $500 gaming PC that lasts 5 years.

The $1,500 gaming system I built in 2005 will need to be replaced by a $1,000 to $1,500 gaming system that will last me until (hopefully) 2015; but that $500 gaming system will need to be replaced by another $500 gaming system in 2012/2013, and that system will need to be replaced a couple years down the line.

With all due respect I have to say you're following the wrong philosophy for PC gaming. The bleeding edge technology is irrelevant and expensive and only fit for enthusiasts. Mainstream gamers simply don't need anything beyond an HD 5670 and a dual core processor. In a like for like / cost for cost comparison consoles cost more than their list price because the console manufacturer expects to make it back from you with the cost of the games and accessories. In all fairness all you need to do is follow a Tick Tock model of upgrades.

Tick -> Complete overhaul or new system.

Tock -> If needed upgrade the RAM / GPU.

If you're going to be playing mainstream games like MMOs you can bet that they won't be pushing a mainstream system any harder than they need to. Besides this, graphics are always pushed before the CPUs become obsolete and the GPUs are the easiest parts to upgrade behind the RAM. So that $500 system will be GPU limited before it ever becomes CPU limited, however your options in that respect are far better and the progress made for your $ are also far greater as time passes.

Mainstream performance will soon be defined by laptops and CPUs with integrated GPUs like AMD Ontario and later their Bulldozer CGPU which will have less performance than that $500 mainstream PC I listed. Follow the market, don't follow the enthusiasts. You can get a great system with extremely solid performance for very little money comparatively and still have the same enjoyment from the same games. Developers have pretty much abandoned the bleeding edge technology aside from a few niche titles, so theres no need for that $1500 game PC today, not anymore.

I think most enthusiasts would laugh at you if you called the hardware I am looking at "enthusiast" hardware. The only component I have really settled on at this point in time is the Radeon HD5770, which is a nice graphics card and will play games for the foreseeable future, but doesn’t even come close to what enthusiasts are doing.

There is money to be saved, and that’s why I’m willing to accept that someone could build a 5 year gaming PC for $1,000; unfortunately, the only thing that justifies my purchase of a gaming PC is work, and what I need (essentially) will eliminate any potential savings.

Once again, I’m not saying PC gaming is as bad as it once was (and in 10 years I doubt there will be a need for dedicated gaming hardware) but playing games on a PC is no where near to being as affordable as console gaming.

Please show me this magical PC build for $400 that I won't need to replace with a new $400 system in 12 to 18 months. Be sure to include a motherboard, memory, cpu, graphics card, audio card (although I will accept onboard audio), hard-drive, case, power-supply and licenced version of Windows. Show me benchmarks that will lead me to believe that this system will handle a game like Starwars: The Old Republic above minimum settings and above 800x600 when a guild decides to have a 100 man raid in the zone you're playing in.