Thai3g_Eclipse

Yep, ATi has two All-In-Wonder video cards for the PCi-express. That would be the AIW X600Pro, which can be found for about $150-$180 and the AIW X800XL, which is about $330-$350.

That's good that your PSU is underrated, but have you tried looking at your rails? Make sure your +12V is at least 22A and it doesn't flunctuate under 11.8V or over 12.2V. I think that's not a valid assumption. The 6600GT is a great card for those who are casual gamers that want to play the latest games without going broke or don't mind losing some eye candy. My father recently bought a PNY 6600GT card (AGP version) and it plays Doom III and Battlefield 2 very well. You can find these cards for $120-$150 USD, which I think is a bargain for what you get. Of course it won't match a 7800GTX/X1800XT, but it's also nearly 20% of the cost of those cards. The value of money is within the eyes of the beholder.

The retail version's already out? I thought that was slated for OCtober 18th?

Going with a X2 3800+ or 4400+ will not matter much, as they can both overclock easily up to 2.8 GHz, but the 4400+ does have a larger L2 cache, which is why it is considerably more expensive. Having a large L2 cache will generally give about a 5-10% FPS boost in games, and enhance other multimedia applications such as encoding/decoding video and music files. Between the two, the 7800GTX will give you the most difference in gaming, but I'm worry about if your power supply is up to the increased power consumption. The X2 processor will definitely be noticeable during your every daily uses, but won't do much for games. My 2 cents.

The Radeon should be able to outpace the 6200 series easily. The 9600XT has more pixel pipelines, higher core speed and higher memory speed.

Word of advice: Don't go cheap on the motherboard. It's what holds everything together and having a good board will give you a guaranteed performance and support/updates. I would stick with paying a little more for the DFI.

The DFI board is fine, so is the Abit AN8 series. I would personally recommend you this RAM however: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16820227210 Since you are not familiar with the hardware aspect I doubt you will want to overclock. These are cheaper than the Crucial ones and they offer high memory bandwidth with low timings without a huge hit on your +3.3v rail.

Don't be discouraged about not running F.E.A.R. well. It is very taxing on even the higher end systems, and unless you have a 7800GTX or the X1800XT, it will not run very good unless you turn down the details. I barely managed to get ~25 FPS on average in this game, and it requires a lot of video memory to run the game fluidly. This game and in addition to Call of Duty 2 is showing that more video memory will be important in the future.

That's all you need to know. It is better to use liquid thermal paste than a pre-applied pad because of better heat conductivity and better contact between the heatsink and whatever component it's on. Having a good thermal compound is one of the easiest ways to lower the temperature, hence as long as it is applied correctly.

As ripken204 stated, AGP is dying. There are virtually no motherboards being produced now with AGP slot at all. Nvidia and ATi will not be releasing any AGP counterparts for the 7000 series and X1x00 series respectively. Yes, you can obviously find AGP cards everywhere, but when your store still has many quantities of those items in stock you won't just throw it away.

Not a bad case. For the average Joe it'll work out fine, although if I had to nickpick something, I wish they would opt for the 120mm fan in the back of the case instead of an 80mm.

The best thing to do is try to run some of the new games yourself -- that is, get the demo of the current games. Obviously you can't get a demo of UT2007 yet, but try demos like Call of Duty 2 and F.E.A.R. Since you play UT2004, I'm pretty sure you're planning to play UT2007 as well. Sports games such as the recently released Madden 2006 is becoming very taxing on the video cards, so in all due honesty I can tell you the FX5200 will not have enough processing power to run any of the upcoming games, much less a game about 6 months to a year from now.

I agree with Ripken. The dual 6600GT is more of a bragging rights than a performer. For a $300 graphic card, I'm surprised they're still using DDR3 memory on it. Oh well. The DFI board would have been a better choice in terms of reliability and overclocking, while the PSU is not bad, there are better ones for the price such as the Antec TruPower 550 or the OCZ PowerStream 520. And yes, it would be great to know what RAM you got exactly.

Depending on what games you play, that card may have serious problems running the more demanding games such as Call of Duty 2, F.E.A.R., Quake IV and Unreal Tournament 2007. The FX5200 is becoming a very outdated card, and it wasn't exactly very good when it first came out either. If you only play some mild older games like Sim City 3000/4 or something of that caliber, you'll be fine.

The link you posted isn't working. I'm not too hip on ThermalTake power supplies, and the only Antec power supply I like is the TruPower 550. I would recommend an OCZ PowerStream 520W Power supply instead, since the fan runs quiet and the unit itself is very dependable. Look around for reviews on this one.

Disabled. That's about the best it'll get. I can't run any higher than 1280x1024 because my monitor doesn't support anything higher than that.

I can run it @ 1280x1024 with 4x Anti-Aliasing with max details. Here's a 2 shots:

Awesome game, can't wait for it to come out (Comes out the same day as Quake IV too I believe). What video card do you have? Looks like the smoke effects are killing your card.

Yes.

I have no idea why you would want to upgrade that. You have a strong processor, video card and a good amount of RAM. With those kind of components, you shouldn't even bother upgrading til the end of next year.

I'd also suggesting waiting because Socket 1002 (M2) is supposed to be released early next year. It is the new CPU socket interface for AMD CPUs. It'll also give you more time to save up too, so sounds like this might be the best for you.

You'd probably get $200-$300 for it. Shipping is going to be a killer though with the PC + Monitor like that.

I'd like to add Seasonic and Fortron/Sparkle to that list.

You must use the same GPU series in order to run SLI. http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Njk2 In other words, they must be the same type and brand. If you got a eVGA 6600GT, the other one must be a eVGA 6600GT. Nvidia is currently working on a fix to use card of the same family regardless of the brand (i.e. a eVGA 6600GT and a PNY 6600GT) but you can't pair up to different cards period.

Well okay then, the Radeon 9800 Pro it is. If overheating becomes such a concern, invest in the Artic Cooling's ATI Silencer HSF.