Right, so I’m crap with money. I generally live paycheque to paycheque (when I have them *grumble*) and saving for a rainy day is a phrase in a foreign tongue most of the time.
So, even though I’m currently up to my eyeballs in debt and don’t yet have a job to alleviate that problem, what have I spent the last 3hrs doing? Yup that’s right. Pricing out parts for my new computer. Talk about class eh?
As you know, my comp has been tits up for a little over a month now and I think I finally tracked down the issue. I believe I blew the AGP slot on my motherboard when I stupidly installed a vid card requiring 3.3v of power and my board only supported cards up to 1.5v. Aren’t I the brilliant moron? Go me! I’ve tried the board with old 1.5v cards and nothing so I suspect that’s my issue as everything else seems to be fine.
That means I need a new mobo and of course as the inevitable march of technomalogical thingermajiggies has continued unabated, it pretty much means I need a new everything else as well so as I can keep up to date. 90% of my current hardware sadly isn’t compatible. *grrr arrrg*
So yeah, I’ve been scoping out new gear like a kid in a candy store wishing I had unlimited funds to play with.
At least I know what I want for my birthday and Christmas. Too bad I know I won’t be getting any of it — As a minor Aside (read rant) I honestly loathe people who feel that these occasions are excuses for practical gifts. I’m sorry, but I can buy a sweater any day of the year. If you want to impress me, get me something for my inner child. Get something that is absolutely pointless beyond the sheer fun it brings ME. And most importantly, get something that I’ll use and enjoy (yes I’ll use a sweater, but it brings me no joy).
Yeah, anyway. New Comp.
Right now I’m looking at the following:
- Motherboard
- Intel Quad Core 3Ghz Chip
- 4GB of DDR2 Ram (at least to start, or maybe 2GB of DDR3 if it’s cheap enough)
- A nice pair of 500GB SATA HDs in a RAID config
- And two Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2900Pro 512 MB Video cards Crossfire linked (I’ll probably have to start with one)
Thankfully, I get to keep my current soundcard as it, my DVD burner, my power supply and my case are about all thats left of my old rig that will end up being compatible with the new board. Although I can technically still use at least one of my current PATA Hard Drives in the interim.
For those of you who may be asking why I don’t go with an AMD chip or an Nvidia card if I’m such a hardcore gamer. The answer is simple: brand loyalty. I’ve never been happy with either company or their products. I prefer ATI’s cards and the Intel chipset. I likes what I likes and you can’t convince me otherwise.
Okay I think I’m done drooling for now. If I stare at this stuff for much longer I’m bound to get arrested for stalking. G’night
Yeah, I doubt that I’ll ever go back to a desktop. I’m not a hardcore enough gamer to care about having dual graphics processors, really.
Besides, I can (and have) run F.E.A.R., Obsidian, and HL2 on here. I’m not really concerned about having the absolute prettiest graphics, ’cause they’re pretty enough for me.
Oh, and real hardcore gamers just turn down all the graphics settings anyways, so what does it matter?
A terabyte of HDD space would be nice though…
Heh. I love my Desktop. That being said… I would love a laptop as well. Yeah I’m greedy.
And yeah, pretty enough graphics are fine, The benefit comes from having the ultimate pretty graphics and still being able to play the game more smoothly and faster than those who strip their graphics down to bare specs.
Personally, I likes me some Graphics. Screw FPS or reaction time. I’m already as fast as I’ll ever be (and minutely slowing down as I age) I might as well enjoy the scenery as the young whippersnappers send me back to the respawn point.
And yes. 1Tb of HD space is nice. I’m actually debating whether to get two 750GB drives and just go all out 🙂