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Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
OK Ok, i took the plunge, sort of, i just ordered a Core 2 Duo Conroe E6600, ordered a new harddrive the other day (before finding out that Costco was sellign 400gb drives for $99) ordered a case and PS yesterday.

I've still a few components left, going to order a couple gigs of PC2-6400 ram today, and i'm going to wait a few days and see if the Nforce 590 for Intel's come out when scheduled.

My questions are 2....

#1, i need a suggestion on a decent, but not extremely expensive video card, i'd like Nvidia, something that can do SLI if i should ever decide to get a 2nd card, and if at all possible not cost much over $200.

#2, OS, is there any advantage to getting Win Xp x64 at this time.

with XP64, i'm sure that i'd run into some legacy driver issues on some of my older hardware. if there is a compelling reason to go x64 before Vista, then i'd deal with those issues, but otherwise, plain old vanilla XP Pro is going to be my choice.

oh, i also want a video card that will play nice with an Agia PhysX card eventually (not buying one yet, but eventually...)

thanks guys.

Comments

  • My three answers are:

    1) eVGA 7900GT 256MB (but make sure you get a card with the newer PCB, the older ones were plagued with crashing & artifacting issues).

    2) There's no compelling reason.

    3) PhysX is relatively powerless piece of hardware and it probably remains as an early demonstration platform... artist-formerly-known-as-ATI and NVIDIA are most certainly going to integrate faster PPU's in their future graphics solutions (not R600 and G80, but R700 and G90 might have a dedicated PPU on board) so you're going to get more bang for the buck if you just buy a new video card instead of a first generation physics card.

    One more thing: there's only one DX10 capable GPU on the market at the moment: the Intel GMA X3000. If you want to enjoy the new Aero Glass feature of Vista (and the forthcoming DX10 games), you'd have to buy a new video card anyway.
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Eclecticonaut [/i]
    [B]My three answers are:

    1) eVGA 7900GT 256MB (but make sure you get a card with the newer PCB, the older ones were plagued with crashing & artifacting issues).

    . [/B][/QUOTE]

    I'm going to end up with a new card before too long, i ended up picking up a 7600 GT mostly because its what they had in stock locally, and i wanted to have something to put the machine together immediately, unfortunately Buy.com fucked me over on the motherboard, so i wont be able to put the machine together till next week.
  • SpiritOneSpiritOne Magneto ABQ NM
    i hate buy.com, I always get my pc parts from Newegg or Compuplus. Both very good retailers.

    The evga vid card is a good option, forget the physics card though, its paperware right now, now real visual improvement.

    I have a computer running XP64 right now, it has been up and running for approx 4-6 months right now.

    1. The first major issue I had with x64 was antivirus. Its actually my wifes computer, and I was going to put Norton on it for ease of use, but I had to put AVG (its actually an upgrade over Norton anyway) on it, because it was the only one I would trust that was compatable.

    2. I had a slight problem installing Adobe Creative Suite 2 on it. It required me to install it into a root directory like C:/Adobe instead of where it usually resides in Program Files. This is because the Adobe installer did not recognize the (x32) in the 32 bit program files folder, and it would not properly activate itself in the 64 bit program files folder. Once I put it in a root director, it worked fine.

    3. My wife is a digital photographer/scrapbooker, she uses a lot of photoshop CS2, and her Nikon D50. The operating system itself is rock solid, and very fast. She has not had one problem regarding the software bogging down on here even though she is working in photoshop, printing photos and scanning slides all at the same time. It is a very stable operating system.

    4. As far as compatability goes, with the exception of the antivirus & Adove program (mentioned above) I have experienced no problems installing any software once you understand how to emulate 32 bit windows.

    5. One problem I did run into is it wont connect to my Xbox360 like my computer does. Windows Media Connect does not function well on x64.

    Overall, I would give it a 6/10 vs XP pros 7/10. Its very quick, doesnt get bogged down easily, and the few programs that do use 64bit extensions fly on her PC. But, you do have to do a little dance, sing a little song, and pray to the microsoft gods to install some programs, and for some, thats a deal breaker.
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by SpiritOne [/i]
    [B]i hate buy.com, I always get my pc parts from Newegg or Compuplus. Both very good retailers.

    [/B][/QUOTE]

    I orderd the mobo from buy.com because they had it in stock, newegg didn't, i ordered it on wednesday with next day shipping, i ordered things from newegg later that day with next day shipping,

    Friday afternoon, everything from newegg shows up, and buy.com still shows my order as "sent to warehouse" so i call them, and they say "oh we're having a fulfillment issue, it's not in stock" so i say, fine, cancel the order i'll get it from somewhere else.

    Now i'm finding out that it takes 7-9 days to cancel an order, and if it comes in stock over the next 7-9 days, they will ship it to me regardless, and i'll have to refuse shipment or ship it back to them to get a refund, less shipping of course.


    so i emailed them back again, and told them that they were specifically denied authorization to charge anything to my card, that i was calling my bank first thing tuesday morning to let them know that buy.com was specifically denied from charging anything to my card, and that if any charge showed up, i'd immediately initiate a chargeback.
  • Sorry to hear about the mail order hassel.

    I would not spend allot on a vid card right now. The DX 10 cards will come out within 6-12 months and you will want one of those. I was going to get anouther 7800gtx for SLI but then the lifspan makes it almost not worth it. With the Ageia I was going to wait for the PCIe version to come out.
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by PSI-KILLER [/i]
    [B]Sorry to hear about the mail order hassel.

    I would not spend allot on a vid card right now. The DX 10 cards will come out within 6-12 months and you will want one of those. I was going to get anouther 7800gtx for SLI but then the lifspan makes it almost not worth it. With the Ageia I was going to wait for the PCIe version to come out. [/B][/QUOTE]

    evga offers a "Step up" program, where i coul dsend them my video card within the next 90 days, and pay the difference between what i paid, and the new card. nice program, the only problem is they say it takes at least 15 days, and they dont cross ship, so you are out a video card for 15 days, (unless you buy a cheap one in the meantime)

    I'll be happy with the 7600GT GDDR3 256mb, as it is better than the FX5900 i have currently... :)


    As for Buy.com and the mail order hell, all i am getting out of them now is their canned responce,

    "We have submitted your cancellation request to our fulfillment center for approval. However, this is only a request and your order may still ship while this request is being processed.

    You will receive an email confirming or denying the cancellation request for this order within the next few business days.

    Thank you for your patience in the matter."

    So i've got to call my bank first thing tuesday morning after the hoilday, and tell them that buy.com is expressly forbidden from deducting funds from my account. and initiate a chargeback.

    mostly because if they end up denying the cancelation and shipping it, its going to not only take weeks to get the refund, but they are going to charge me for shipping. even though it was their fault in the first place. UGH.

    i will never buy from Buy.com again, and i'll reccomend that other people dont either (I work in a place where people are constantly asking me where to buy things from, i used to suggest buy.com, now i won't, granted even if a vasly large number of the people i reccomend things to, say 50% of the roughly 2k people stop shopping there, buy.com won't give a rats ass, but hey, its a the best i can do right? other than going to their headquarters with a torch and a large amount of gasoline.
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