The parts for my new rig are prolly coming today so I dunno if I will be able to make it or not.

Well it was a barebones kit on Tigerdirect. A better deal than the others I've seen and within my budget(my budget is basically the amount of money it takes to buy a 9800GX2).

Though, I've heard a bunch of crazy things about the motherboard, about it being shipped D.O.A., but I figured I might as well take the chance, my system needs upgraded BADLY.

- 3.0ghz Core 2 Duo E8400
- WD 300gb SATA hdd
- 2gb corsair ddr2 ram
- 800-watt psu (PowerGen brand... never heard of them.. scares me a bit)
- XFX 680i mobo
- EVGA 8600GT 256

I had to buy the gfx card separately, and I asked my friend about it after I bought it, since he had one. He said it sucks bigtime haha. But again, it was within my budget, and it is still a Crapload better than my 6800GT... and it wasn't all that much.. can upgrade later.

It's not a spectacular upgrade for most people, but I am within a very very tight budget and basically any upgrade for me is worth it.

To give my current specs:
- 2.4ghz A64 4000+ (single core)
- 2x WD 250gb IDE drives (6-7 yrs old)
- 1.5gb kingston ddr ram
- 500-watt Ultra brand psu.. with the main back fan not working.
- Gigabyte mobo, AGP, with a shot IDE controller. (can't use my dvd drive atm)
- BFG 6800GT 256 AGP (got it preordered, and have had to replace the thermal paste and fan due to overheating issues)

Saw this on Craig's List for H-burg:

http://harrisburg.craigslist.org/sys/637946234.html

A little cheaper 8800gt 512.....

Nice o'clock.  Im still at 3gig on mine and i don't think im going any higher! it runs pretty stable I just need to get a different mobo.  I bought a p35 mobo when the chipset just came out and it had a lot of issues upon release.  If i had waited or bought a different chipset there would be no probs so im thinking of either getting a different board same chipset or... different chipset. idk yet...  might wait on the p45 chipset just im not going to buy it as soon as it's released I'll wait a bit to see if it's got any issues like the p35 did.

i'm hoping to make it tonight.  I'm on call, so i might have to bail at any time, but i really need to kill something.  :P

Dave, saw your note about your p35 having issues?  Cypher and I have had nothing but troubles with the 680i.  We've always thought there's some driver or chipset issues when combining the quad core with 64bit windows.  Most of our issues though stem from the memory issues and graphics issues.  I dont' want to steal the thread, so, maybe we can start a new one to talk about our issues.  Right now, i think both Cypher and I have systems that stay up most of the time without hard locks or the video crapping out.

my main issue is when i boot up the system from a long downtime it hangs for up to 10-15min before it boots.  Sometimes it then double boots but once it's up it stays up and everything is fine and dandy.  that system hang annoys the crap outa me though I updated the bios and the notes said the double boot would be fixed and it did but now it starting to do it again at times.  I've had many abit boards in the past and never had any issues. 
the only other issue is my integrated mic built in the soundcard doesn't work.  thats not a big deal to me though and nothing a add-in sound card couldn't fix.

Guess I missed the CoD4 action tonight. Was watching the Pens playoffs tonight (Sens vs Pens...Pens win and are 2-0 on the series now...game 3 in Ottawa on monday)

Anywho...it's thundering pretty bad so I guess everyone called it an early night. I'll try on tomorrow if anyone else is game

I gotcha add on sound card Dave next week...just drop me a email like thursday or friday as a reminder!

WILL DO!!!! THANKS

i'm hoping to make it tonight.  I'm on call, so i might have to bail at any time, but i really need to kill something.  :P

Dave, saw your note about your p35 having issues?  Cypher and I have had nothing but troubles with the 680i.  We've always thought there's some driver or chipset issues when combining the quad core with 64bit windows.  Most of our issues though stem from the memory issues and graphics issues.  I dont' want to steal the thread, so, maybe we can start a new one to talk about our issues.  Right now, i think both Cypher and I have systems that stay up most of the time without hard locks or the video crapping out.

My one friend said that when he installed vista64 he had a lot of lockups too.  he went back to vista 32 and he said it's pretty stble.  Maybe now that sp1 is availablle it will fix your issues.