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Old 06-12-2007, 03:24 AM   #4 (permalink)
Lasereth
Knight of the Old Republic
 
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Location: Winston-Salem, NC
I'd "downgrade" to a Core 2 Duo E6600 or a 6700 (the fastest normal one they make) and upgrade the videocard to a 8800 GTX. 4 gigabytes of ram is an awesome idea as well, but only 3 GB of it will show up in Windows XP (all 4 will show up in Vista when we eventually go to it though). I'd get 2x 2 GB sticks if you can to prevent memory problems.

The motherboard is awesome but I wouldn't spend more than $150 on one. Get what you need, unless you have cash spilling out of your pockets.

I wouldn't trust the power supply that comes with the case. I'm currently using an Antec but I prefer Enermax if I have a choice. I recommend the Enermax Liberty series from newegg. They're modular and look like they're worth their weight in gold IRL.

If you're gonna be doing any gaming on this PC (which I'm guessing you are) then I can't recommend Vista. Video drivers simply aren't optimized for it yet (expect a 30% decrease in performance simply because of Vista instead of XP). I'd go with XP Pro.

I also can't recommend widescreen LCDs. They may be your preference, but I own a 20" widescreen LCD and fucking hate it. I want to play StarCraft. Too bad, doesn't support widescreen. I want to play BF 1942. Too bad. BF: Vietnam? Nope. BF2? Nope. BF2142? Nope. Hey, my webpages look like ass! Why? Widescreen LCD. It's fucking stupid that my widescreen massive LCD hinders my computer usage. If you're deadset on buying a huge LCD, PLEASE don't buy a widescreen unless you're 100% positive that EVERY game and application you're gonna run fully supports it.

You're definitely making the right choice by dumping money into the CPU, videocard, and ram. Now is the time to do it since the Core 2 Duo and GeForce 8 series have blown away the competition.
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