Member Avatar for Perrorist

What is the current, commercially available technology for mobos, RAM, graphics cards, etc for someone who's about to purchase a state-of-the-art kit. I'm less concerned with brands than architecture. For example, is Haswell where it's at, or has it been superseded? Remember, it what's already out there to buy that I'm interested in.

Thanks.

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As of January 25, 2026 — short, practical update to the 2013 thread for anyone buying a cutting‑edge graphics/video workstation today.

Long story short: modern desktop platforms center on DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 I/O; AMD’s AM5 (Ryzen 7000/9000) and recent Intel desktop lines are the two viable high‑end choices, while PCIe 6.0 remains an enterprise/retimer story for now. For video/graphics work you want lots of CPU cores plus strong single‑thread and a professional GPU with certified drivers and (optionally) ECC VRAM. ()

CPU / motherboard / RAM: AM5 motherboards (X670E/B650E and newer B850/X870 boards from vendors) give long platform life and native DDR5 support; many AM5 boards also expose unbuffered ECC support when used with CPUs/motherboards that enable it — useful if ’s reliability angle matters. Intel’s current desktop refreshes still compete strongly for single‑thread and tools that are latency sensitive. Check each board’s spec sheet for explicit “ECC supported” and the vendor QVL before buying. ()

GPUs: consumer—and creator—GPUs moved to NVIDIA Blackwell (GeForce RTX 50 series) for massive AI/RT capability; NVIDIA also ships RTX PRO Blackwell workstation cards for creators who need ECC, larger framebuffers and certified drivers. AMD’s RDNA4/RX 9000 and Radeon PRO workstation families are the other mainstream route if you prefer AMD pro drivers. For serious video work, prefer workstation/pro cards (or at least “Creator/Studio” driver support) for stability and codec/driver certifications. (nvidianews.nvidia.com)

Storage and practical build tips: use a high‑end NVMe scratch drive (PCIe 5.0 M.2 drives now available — Phison E26/E28‑based designs deliver the sustained writes that 4K/8K timelines need). Don’t assume PCIe 6.0 will help your desktop yet — it’s just appearing in data‑center silicon and retimers. If you target RTX‑class Blackwell GPUs, budget a modern ATX 3.x / 12VHPWR‑ready PSU and a robust cooling solution. (tomshardware.com)

Tieback to thread: ’s AMD point was prescient — core counts matter — but today even mainstream chips go well beyond eight cores. ’s ECC advice still holds for mission‑critical work: implement ECC on a board and GPU that support it if uptime and silent data correctness are priorities. For a graphics/video dev workflow, balance many CPU cores (rendering/encode), a pro GPU (accelerated effects, AI tools, certified codecs), lots of fast DDR5, and a PCIe 5.0 scratch NVMe — that combination gives the best real‑world throughput today.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

You don't ask much, do you? The answers will depend upon what you intend to do with your gear. Myself, I have an almost 7 year old system that still kicks butt! Dual quad-core Intel CPUs, 8GB of fully buffered ECC RAM, 10+TB disc, nVidia 8800GT dual display video w/ dual 1920x1200 24" displays, dual DVD-RW drives, and other goodies. It cost me about $5000USD at the time. It can play dual HD videos (one on each display) at the same time.

Performance hardware? Get an Intel mobo and CPU's (4-6 cores each of up to 2 cpu chips), with good cooling gear, a 1000watt power supply, low-cost nVidia graphics (unless you intend on high-end gaming - the low-end these days will blow your socks off!), plenty of memory (16-32GB), and plenty of sata-3 drives. Blu-ray? Don't bother unless you plan on using it for backup. The encryption of commercial BD discs is a PITA to deal with. DVD's are a no-brainer. It is easy to backup your DVD's, but BD's are another thing - you have to first extract them to MKV format, and/or then convert to the appropriate format to store to either DVD or BD.

Haswell is a low-power bus and Intel Celeron CPU chip intended for mobile systems. Don't bother for a desktop or server system. The current level for desktop/server systems is Sandy Bridge as far as I understand.

There are a lot of motherboard manufacturers out there that make good gear, and they are certainly options if you want the lower cost afforded by AMD cpus. However, if you want the best performance, then get an Intel motherboard with Sandy Bridge chip sets and Intel CPUs.

One final note. If you want top-line reliability, then make sure your motherboard supports fully-buffered ECC RAM, and get/install that. It has saved my butt on more than one occasion! ECC means Error Correction Code. IE, it will continue to operate even if memory goes flaky. I has such a problem due to RAM overheating. The system detected it, mapped the bad RAM out of use, and continued to operate normally, if with less usable memory until I could deal with the problem. Reliability is MORE than it is cracked up to be!

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

My computer is about 1 1/2 years old and has an 8-core AMD processor -- runs Diablo III online very very well. The more cores the motherboard has, the better (IMO). I also have 2 hard drives, one is 1TB and the other external is 3TB. You need a 64-bit operating system in order to access that much space.

Member Avatar for Perrorist

Thanks for the replies. Very helpful. I'm not a games programmer, but I need a decent system for graphics and video development.

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