now that's what I was looking for.

If you're building a new system or want to have an upgradeable system

Yeah, I'm on the last legs of the current upgradeable system, so it's time to put in the dough to step up to a new one. Is AM2/PCIe the kind of thing I can patch with new hardware bits for some time to come? if so, I'm off to newegg.

OS wise - stay away from Fista if you can

yup. I still use 2000 :D I'm building a new machine to finally upgrade to XP, now that its planned obsolescence is looming, so I can play this copy of Company of Heroes that's been whispering sweet nothings in my ear since november.

(lol @ vistula) 

I'm sure that going from 2000 to XP will be a comfortable ride but it's hardly an upgrade.

I've been using Vista for almost a year and had no problems at all. It found everything when I intalled it - 2 pre-release versions, 2 RC version and Ultimate - and I can't remember having to re-install anything, certainly nothing Quake related. There is no slowdown and boot times are much quicker, no network issues, I really can't think of anything I don't like. And it's pretty.

But it is different from XP and you have to learn these changes to use it effectively. Oh, and in my opinion, switch off the admin rights blocker (or whatever it's called), that IS a pain for people (like me) who constantly "fiddle" with settings, programs, registry etc.

I have a dual boot set-up with XP but use Vista as the default OS. 

I'm sure that going from 2000 to XP will be a comfortable ride but it's hardly an upgrade.

Which is why I never bothered. If games hadn't started "requiring" XP, I still wouldn't. 

> Is AM2/PCIe the kind of thing I can patch with new hardware bits for some time to come?

Not so sure about this... AMD and Intel play their cards pretty close, and the industry kind-of exists to force people into upgrading.

You can't go wrong though imho. With AM2 you're getting a mobo/cpu about half the price of Intel, but the core2duo is the current top dog. And both platforms have more expensive and higher clocked CPUs available for you to buy when the prices drop.

PCIe is probably a good choice though, and getting a mobo with lots of memory slots.
(I bought a socket 754 board cheap-as awhile ago but it only has 2 memory slots! Dumb &^* Still - the K8VM800M is a great thing - Fast, and a rock!)

> so I can play this copy of Company of Heroes that's been whispering
> sweet nothings in my ear since november.

Laugh. 

Does anyone have any personal experience with this card?

I'm not after comparing this card with Nvidia, and I have already read loads of reviews, so no need to quote any links. I'm looking for responses from anyone who has this card and is using it on a day-to-day basis. 

Does anyone have any personal experience with this card?

I have one, now, but I'm not using it for gaming or other work, but it could be worth a shot... 

agp cards worth anything?
I have an oldish Athlon 1800+ system. Thought I could buy a used card for this.
Nvidia of course, so there is opengl support. Is a 7000 series limited by the bus? I don't know anything about these modern things.
I have MSI 6830 mainboard. 

For a 1800+ AGP is the way to go. No idea about the 7000 series though. 

just some / any cheap nvidia card. 

Tom's VGA charts are the most useful to get a feel for the various chips:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=740&model2=739&chart=285 

I'm having alot of trouble with my machine, it's always had some weird randomn reboot problems, but now it just reboots each time it reaches the windows loading screen, I can leave it on and it just continuously reboots... I've tried switching most of the hardware other than the mobo and cpu, with no luck, so I guess it must be my mobo or something?

If I wanted to get a new mobo+cpu in an ~300 euro price range, what would you people recommend? Core2duo I imagine? 

My brother had the same issue, and it seenms it comes either form a sector of your hard drive that is failing, or from your mother board that is almost dead... Just try to put the XP CD, and test a repair... if it works, it was the HD issue, if not, buyu a new mother board, or a new PC... sorry for the bad news :( 

a boot menu with xp if you press f8 or sth when it starts, and you can go to safe mode or something like that? 

I already tried it with my brother's PC, and it doesn't helped much considering Bal's PC has the same problems... 

jpl: he said he tried switching most of the hardware so probably the hdd too

bal: maybe cpu overheating? you could try reattaching the cooler to your cpu? 

Calm down please.... 

some US government organization told Microsoft to press the "shut down French mappists" button. But they accidentally hit the wrong Lambert.
As you all know, there are backdoors in the operating systems.
(The same with cellphones, they send messages to them start acting weird after two years, so you have to buy a new one. Although if you have a phone from 1998 or so, they don't have this feature and work indefinitely.) 

Yeah actually a simple chkdsk seems to have 'fixed' the problem, but only up to a certain point, I'm still getting the weird random reboot, guess my main hard drive must be fucked for good, will have to look into reinstalling windows on a clean on. Thanks for your suggestions!

While this topic is active, do people here recommend switching to 64bit and Vista anytime soon? Was listening to some coders at work, and DX10 seemed to be worth the trouble of using Vista... 

If you haven't already, you could run a check on your system memory too with e.g. memtest86(+), sporadic parity errors in RAM can cause weird symptoms. 

Is it supposed to make somebody laugh ? 

Finally figured out what that loud pop noise was... one of the capacitors in my Antec Neo Power 480 Watt PSU exploded. -_-

i suppose it was mostly my fault... i was a little short on power-- probably running right at the limit, anyway.

dunno if this info will be useful to anyone... :P 

settled on a corsair hx620watt. it's even quieter than the antec was (in fact, i really only hear the case fans now), and the kit was very comprehensive.
i was watching the voltage for a bit, and they are rock solid.

i'd recommend it to anyone who's got more than a couple HDDs and a highend video card (or 2). 

you overloaded a 480 watt psu? o_O 

that's very doable 

Hate to say a dirty word, but has anyone tried switching to using a Mac+boot camp for gaming/mapping at all? How has your experience been? Compatibility ok?

XP is ok, but unless MS pull out some radical service pack for Vista, I don't think I'm going to want to go down that road. Also, all the drivers for NVidia and ATi cards seem to be shite lately, so maybe there is a chance performance could be better on Macs. Do graphics drivers etc. get updated often on the Mac like they do on PC?