Cujo

right. it's not specifically sli though. i don't like crossfire much either. except when you're talkin dual gpu cards. i'd like to see your lowly ~$160 cards in sli beat my ~$320 1gb 4870 at 1920x1200 with 8x aa turned on...

i don't understand sli?

i avoid tivo by simply downloading all my shows. hd with 5.1 is 1.1gb though. on my connection i can get a show in about 15 minutes. oh and they're usually uploaded within an hour or two of their air time.

i agree. you'll be more limited by lack of ram in that situation.

38 is fine.

boo sli. my suggestion would be google searching. i've got 0 experience with sli.

believe the core temp.

not many good aluminum cases for less than $150 out there. kind of contradictory. why is spending more than $150 wasting money anyway? i've had my case longer than any other component. i spent $219 on it probably 4 years ago. i don't anticipate needing a new one until they move away from atx spec. if that ever happens.

small case. if you're used to a big one you won't like it.

getting it now.

you chose it cause i told you m2 was getting it!... "thanks cujo!" nice system m2. sam, i haven't heard anything about a "brittle" top fan but i know a couple people with the 900 and it's pretty nice.

wow i've never seen a hdd that big with 8mb cache. so small. i didn't even know seagate made 500gb drives with less than 16mb.

wd makes 32mb cache drives? they still make 518s?? cool. i like my g5. i've got 4gb of the same ram. lookin to get 8gb but it's out of stock my my supplier right now. i don't even bother looking at those high end mobos anymore. the performance differences are so negligible. listen to mav's idea with the two hdds. they're so cheap right now there's no reason not to get two and setup a raid 1. higher read performance and you don't have to worry about any down time.

thx man. i was just about to dl it. far cry 2 that is...

stay away from that aajs model hard drive preach suggested. that's pure legacy. you want aaks if going wd though i like the 32mb cache 640gb seagate that mav posted. just bought two of them for my media centre. also, don't even consider the gtx 280 or the x2 4870. as i said above, you need at least a 24" or larger monitor to take advantage of those cards. at the res you'll be gaming at, a 4850 will more than suffice. for sure go oem on the operating system. there's also really no reason NOT to go 64bit. despite what some say a 32bit system, vista or otherwise, is not capable of using/seeing/allocating/whatever more than 4gb of total memory(hhd and cpu cache, as well as vid card memory). it's a limitation of 32bitness NOT the operating system. yes MS has made vista 32bit "see" that full 4gb but that's mostly to quell the fears of ignorant people who think they got ripped off and only got ~3gb of ram when they paid for 4. yes people were not only rma'ing their memory but their whole computers. that's why ocz (and others i think) came out with 3gb kits. the way vista 32bit interacts with and uses ram is no different than xp 32bit. preach, ddr2 667? tek, i've pushed those ram numbers in mercenaries 2. even css pushes my system over 2gb. though sitting here typing this with very little open i'm sitting at 1.63gb used. vista sure is a hog...

if you're buying new vista and you're used to xp pro then get vista business. home premium is just like xp home and mce combined. any vista 64 bit will recognize all that ram. that vid card is HUGELY overkill on your monitor but at least you'll never be gpu limited... for that monitor i'd save 100 bucks and go with a 4850. i wouldn't build a new dual core system today either. after playing mercenaries 2 and seeing my dual core pounded with 100% usage my next upgrade will likely be a q9550.

with a default config your choke should never be 200. if it is then start looking for other problems with your computer.

preach, if you're recommending against a 10,000rpm drive you should probably also recommend against ddr3... sam, you can get 8gb of ddr2 for the same price as that ddr3. what monitor are you running? that will help with the vid card choice as that ati card preach recommends is complete overkill for anything less than 1920 res. ie. less than a 24". never buy an intel branded motherboard. asus or gigabyte are the only brands i'd buy. the asus p5q-e should do the trick. since you like antec i'd recommend the true power quattro 850w. i believe m2 just bought or is about to buy one.

well you're lagging cause your choke is 200. your fps of 25 won't help much either.

do you have another card to test with? it could be the slot.

simple answer. NO!

1066 ram can definitely provide improvement in source. i should do some benchmarks. probably not enough difference to make it worth an extra 40-50 bucks but if it's only 20 more then i'd pull the trigger. obvisouly, i did. as far as bus speed on the processor, if you'll be overclocking then it's irrelevant. though either way on these comparably lower end cpus you probably won't see a big difference. i would stick with the 5200 for the higher multi. you won't even have to push the motherboard to oc that bad boy. if you go with the 1333 (333fsb) cpu then you'll be overclocking the mobo straight away.

ocing is simple on those chips. as i said you should at least be able to get 266 fsb out of it. all you have to do in bios is increase your fsb from stock 200 to 266. no other changes should be required.

i've got that ram in my system right now so i couldn't possibly recommend better. if you're not going to oc then that cpu and mobo should be fine. if you are cool with ocing i'd bump to a p45 board and drop the cpu to something lesser like the new e5200. yes only 2mb cache but if it hits 3.6ghz that won't matter much. it's got a 12.5 multi so by simply changing the fsb to 266 from 200 you'll be running 3.3ghz and any chip should do that at stock volts. for whoever said the fsb might hurt him. low fsb chips are actually better for ocing as the typically have higher multipliers. as most mobos support 333fsb now going from 200 to 333 should exhaust most cpus long before the mobo is even pushed past stock. oh and i just noticed, if you don't plan to oc, the e8400 is like 3 bucks more than the e8200.

nice. sounds good.