AGP 8x or RDRAM???????

I am still continuing to research but have hit an impasse. I am building a system for gaming and want the best within reason. For instance I want a 2.4 GHz processor instead of 2.8. I do not want to really skimp on anything else. I don’t want to drain my checkbook for like 5% increase or anything unless I will use it more significantly later. I am agonizing over a motherboard with good RDRAM, or with 8x AGP and DDR. Price is not the concern for me. I want stability and performance. I do not see myself as overclocking in the future. I want to be able to have a system that will play high-end games well like 2 yrs from now with just a small upgrade. Can you guys help?

pc1066 RDRAM will give you the fastest memory system at the moment when paired with a 533mhz p4 northwood.
AGP8x still isnt really needed atm, with the radeon 9700 not getting a real speed increase from the move up from 4x..
no system you build now will get you to play the latest games in 2 years time at high res and frame rate, youd need to upgrade in the future to maintain that sort of gaming level...

I think I can help but I'm going to recommend Option C: None Of The Above.

The only AGP video card out now, the Radeon 9700, has substantial problems working on the motherboards with AGP 8X slots that are out now. Both are the bleeding-edge problems that always come with a new standard, but they won't be resolved until the next hardware revision for one, the other, or both. (And you're looking atleast at two years before any game will demand the extra bandwidth in 8X.)

1066 RDRAM is the fastest memory you can buy today. But its a dying product for desktop systems. Starting with their next round of motherboards Intel will only use Rambus memory on server motherboards. By contrast, there is a high probablity that if you buy high quality DDR RAM today you can move it to the upcoming Dual DDR motherboards and gain the benefit of 1066 for a fraction of the cost.

And finally, a 2.4B with 512 of good DDR and a Ti4400 or 4600 is so much more powerful than any game on the market or on the drawing board requires that you probably won't have to upgrade at all between now and 2004.


BHD

If you can buy a cheap video card for now as a stop gap and wait for the NV40

Oh and as was stated RDRAM is going out of desktops so DDR will go farther, so i say go for the 8x AGP and DDR and upgrade the mobo when Dual DDR boards come out. or go with 4x DDR and upgrade to 8x DualDDR when they come out.

8x agp will provide far more bandwidth than any video card in the near future will use. Today's fastest video cards would hardly lose any performance if forced to run at 2x!
If you must get one of the two, get RDRAM. But I would really wait for dual DDR. And if you can't wait, get a cheap motherboard and stick two ddr modules it it so that you have something to work with until you can upgrade.

Hey guys thanks for all the info. This was the first time I put question in a forum. Got great responses. The general consensus seems to be to pick the DDR/8xAGP M/B. What I meant by small upgrade would be improved CPU and RAM and Vid card to still play high end games well in 2 years. I will keep reading the responses, just wanted to thank you guys. I wish there was a ASUS, ABIT,or at least Intel M/B available now with RDRAM and 8x but oh well.

Well the way i see it evwlvn, RDRAM is being phased out AGP 8x is the new thing (along with S-ATA etc...) So why choose a technology thats being phased out over a brand spankin new un??? AGP 8x all tha way! At least you'll definatly be happy in the absolute certainty you M/B wont be the bottle neck for some time, 'specially with some nice Corsair XMS3200 CL2 RAM ...

as i said i would buy a cheap AGP 4x DDR mobo for now and wait a few months to get a Dual DDR AGP 8x board. but thats just me. why buy a single DDR mobo with 8x when you can wait a bit and get both dual DDR and 8x