Bah... its as if he's trying to say "hey look at my big... COMPUTER" Doesn't matter what you program on. You can program on a stone tablet and that will do most of your work if you need it to O_o. If you want power then go get power. But for programing there is no need for it. Hell people used to program on less then 512k of ram. The fact that you have to ask what type of system is need for "your" programing means that you haven't really started and to start you can run your apps on 25$ machine for a while. After you get skilled enough then consider getting a new comp for it. By then you should know what you need.

heheh... guess you dont need to do pixel shaders much :_)

LOL - sounds like you're really defining a cutting edge gamers machine, rather than a programming one.

SLI is (IMHO) overkill - Scalable Link Interface - if you want the benefits of that technology you need TWO of those cards! You're paying the extra money for the FACILITY to link them!

That said, you probably DO need a decent card and LOTS of RAM if you're going to do anything more than model crappy low-poly models in 3DS, which is a serious resource-hog. In that sense, HT does help down the Intel route, and the faster the better, but the fastest is always WAY overpriced compared to models one or two steps down...

Having said that, you could build a kick-ass machine and unless you're going the GMax or piracy route, 3DS-Max 7 will still cost more than the machine you're looking to build:

http://estore.discreet.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry?CID=174329&SID=37482&SP=10007&DSP=0&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=174329

(If the link doesn't work, it's around $3495 USD)

The overall tone of your message reads like somebody young (sorry if I'm mistaken) - just start cheap - seriously - there are many free or shareware modellers that would serve you equally as well while you learn! If you really need to use 3DS files, you can even get a convertor or an exporter plugin for the cheaper modellers...

Just my $0.02...

(PS - Maya is better ;))

J.

Yeah... these even cheaper computers will be alright for developing and in most cases, playing too. Keep in mind, the price goes up at a steep rate when you buy the newest tech.

What I'd probably do is buy a reasonably fast computer (2.2-3.0 ghz) with 512 mb of ram or so and a graphics card that supports pixel shader 2.0. (Or, if you need 3.0 shaders, get one for that)... This kind of computer isn't the best gaming machine on the planet, but it will probably suit whatever you're trying to do.

Then, in 3 years or whatever, upgrade your graphics card. It doesn't matter if your CPU is a little slow at this point- usually all that's *required* to play games is good graphics cards. Having a bad CPU might make a game run poorly but it'll still be playable.

As for memory, maybe what you can do is get 1 slot of 512... then, if you find you need more later, buy another stick of 256 or 512

roos

In fact, I think you should use 'normal' pc for developing. If it works nicely enough, you can add optional features and test it on higher-end pc. Making it slower is easy, the opposite is harder

The Nforce4 is an excellent chipset. Bought one for my father's computer. Mine still has a Nforce3, which is quite stable and fast, too.
Nforce4 mainboards are not that expensive at all and SLI support comes with them, anyway. But I would not buy two SLI capable gfx cards. Wait for the ATI alternative (Crossfire). It might be cheaper, because the Slave Gfx card doesn't have to be Crossfire capable, while with NVidia's SLI both cards have to support SLI.
So maybe buy an ATI X800 or above, this greatly depends on how much money you have available. When Crossfire's out, you can still add a Crossfire capable card and use the X800 as the slave card.
Make sure to have at least 512GB RAM! 1GB is better and I would really recommend that.
But take a look at the AMD64 CPUs. They are cheaper than the Intel ones, have less power consumption and are definitely as fast as them. With AMD Cool'n'Quite support it's also easier to build a low noise system. I think a AMD64 3200+ should do the job quite well.
Make sure to choose a good HDD! I like to use the Samsung ones. They are fast and usually extremly quite. The SATA1 products are more quite than the SATA2 with NCQ, though these might be a little faster. If you really want performance, take the WD Raptor 74GB with SATA2 and NCQ. But they are extremly expensive and definitely not quite :-)

Thanks for the replys. One big reason why i want to make a new computer is because the one i am on is also being used has an average family pc and with 80 GB HD is going to get used up quicker with my game and family pictures and videos on it. The system i am currently on is a sony vaio and has an 80 GB HD and intel pentium 4 2.0 GHZ processor(dosn't list the cache size), 256 MB ram, 15" monitor, GForce mx 4400. If i do something big in 3ds max i get a GPU crash and my systems graphics go mental and the system crashes happened 3 times all ready with particle systems. The system slows down when running 3ds max and takes a few hours to recover after the program has stopped running. Photoshop also sometimes slows the pc down and this computers security isn't very hiegh so is another downfall. My DVD recorder is corrupt and won't Record onto any CD it isn't to do with +- formats neaver. So that is some reasons why i am wanting to make a new pc for graphics use and my game development to view my work checking the speed and graphics making sure they are fine.

remember one thing, probably when you create your video game, you are going to create a big or huge consumming memory game. remmeber that not too mmuch people have powerfull computers to run that.

really i can see taht you want teh computer to play not to develop. however, if you have teh money and you don´t care about the proce go for it. i will do the smae some day.