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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drothgery" data-source="post: 1283313" data-attributes="member: 360">I'm going to assume you're talking about components, rather than whole systems, because it's a lot easier to write that way. I'm also going to ignore server-oriented CPUs (AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon) and AMD and Intel's new, exorbiantly priced, extreme-gaming CPUs (Athlon 64 FX; Pentium 4 Extreme Edition). So the fastest normal desktop CPU on the market is the Athlon 64 3200, in most cases, with the 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 nipping closely on its heels (and passing it quite often). It depends on what you want to do, and what other components you get. The 2 GHz PowerPC 970 (in the fastest Power Mac G5) is competitive, but usually slower (it's also hurt because Mac OS X has more overhead than Windows XP). Fastest memory is a bit more confusing. All high-end desktops use DDR400 memory. Intel and Apple use dual-channel memory, which improves bandwidth by a lot, but the Athlon 64 has the memory controller built on to the CPU, which improves latency by a lot. Generally speaking, though, an 800 Mhz FSB Pentium 4 (3.2 GHz, 3.0 GHz, or 2.xC GHz) with Intel's 875 chipset wins here. I don't see any big breakthroughs in the immediate future. There will be a lot of incremental improvements in the next year (some of which became available this year, and will become mainstream next year). Serial ATA hard drives don't gain much in performance (because most hard drives can't use all the bandwidth they've got), but the narrower cables are easier to work with. PCI Express video cards will replace AGP, but with 256 MB of video RAM on high-end cards, they won't go off-card for memory very often. DVD writers will get cheaper and more common. Floppies may eventually go away. LCDs will get bigger, better, and cheaper (pick any two). Intel and AMD will keep playing leapfrog in desktop CPU performance. DDR2 memory will become available, but will only be incrementally faster than current memory.</blockquote>

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