Oh and if you go for Vista then one thing that might irritate you is the starting of windows. Vista needs a minute to gather itself.

So does XP. I don't understand why Windows takes so much time to start. It's quite frustrating to see your desktop but know you can't use it for some while, especially when you're in a hurry.

Indeed, but my XP is bit faster ready-to-go than my alien vista. And im way too lazy to track down the cause since i primarily use XP.

If you tune xp properly it should only take maybe 15 seconds to boot. Off a clean install I can usually be booted (once the O/S starts loading) in 5 seconds. It takes longer for the POST screen. If anyone cares I can give you some pointers.

Anyway, the huge memory capacities are indeed better for large resolutions or heavy antialiasing. My LCD has a native resolution of 1680x1050... running anything other than native resolution on an LCD is stupid (it makes the picture quality poor). My current vid card is an 8800GT 512MB, which is decent. I don't have much room to grow from there... an 8800gts is a small step up, then it would be gtx260/280 or ati's high end, which just isn't worth the price imo.

If you were to upgrade to a 8800gts, id call you names, lots of names .

Edit: Unless your gt would go up in flames that is.

Satis, while I agree that the gtx280 is a tad expensive, the Ati high-end cards are realtively reasonably priced. The HD 4870 goes for 220 bucks or so, and comes close to the gtx280 in performance. I would say that in terms of price/quality, it's the best (single) GPU on the market right now. of course, in absolute terms the gtx280 still rules...if you want to fork out an extra 150 bucks, that is.


Anyway, thanks for the input guys...i'm gonna order the pc this weekend.

@Peltz.... don't worry, I'm not stupid. I'm not gonna drop $150 on a 8800gts for that 3fps improvement. :p I want a faster vid card, but I'll wait for the next generation of cards first. Nvidia's gtx series has been... disappointing.

Agreed, ATI have won this round for sure. Over here the gtx280 came in first week at £350-400, I paid £180 for my 4870 about a month after it came out, and they are about £190-200 now.

Nvidia have since dropped prices to about £300 but it's still far to much for the difference in performance.

The 4850 is even better value even though you get the obvious performance hit.

Well, I ordered it. I hate spending that much cash in one go, but meh. I try not to think of that aspect.

Went with Vista, in the end. Figured I'd need to make the step anyway soon, so better to start off with it than to drown in the myriad of 'upgrade' options and so forth later on.

Rest of the specs:

Intel E8500 CPU
Sapphire HD 4870 GPU
4 gigs of RAM
600 watts PSU
750 gig HD

And I went with two extra 80 mm fans in the case to complement the 120 mm main one. Ever since my heat problems in my previous pc I try not to take too many risks.

They should start assembling soon. I'm not in a hurry, the end of the month is still 20 days away.

Oh yeah, I bought a new screen too. 22", manufactured by LG. Decent performance, but no DV-I, only VGA. But I'm guessing DV isn't really worth it at this point anyway, right?

And the mobo?

Who are you ordering it from? Just some local shop?

re: dvi, I don't think it makes that big of a difference. Other people may disagree. What flavor of Vista are you getting?

Lol, damn man, you're gonna have a better PC than me again.

Peltz, the mobo is the DP43TF. Nothing fancy, just decent. It supports quad core for future endeavours, if necessary. And I don't think I'll be touching Crossfire/SLI any time soon before winning the lottery (if I played on it ).


Sat, I'm ordering it from a local company yeah. But it's not your typical two-men enterprise that these things often are, they're a specialized shop that offers both finished systems, loose parts and customizable pc's (http://www.tones.be/index.php). They have three shops and the closest one is a mere 20 minutes driving from here, but they deliver at home for free if you order over 500€ so...not gonna bother driving there.

Vista version is Home Premium. I checked the other ones (executive? and ultimate) and they didn't look very advantageous for a gamer tbh. So I figured I wouldn't pay 70 euros for that.

On a 'funny' note: the new LG screen I bought two days ago seems to have crapped out already. I hooked it up to an old pc around here replacing the smaller screen it was already on, in expectation of the new pc. After slightly over a day, the screen went all...bright and when changing screens everything sort of 'smeared' into each other. Not good. Guess I'll be exchanging it. Better now than when I have the new pc, I suppose.

Then I will run a 3dmark and obliterate Satis' pc! MWuhhahaaa!

Lol, post your score when you do, I'll run it on mine for further Satis baiting

Whats the price on the mobo? Im too lazy and you already bought it

about $100 according to google.

http://www.google.com/products?q=DP43TF ... coring=mrd