It's ok, simpliciter. Let the man brag a little. We've all wanted to share the joy of a new computer with people who might care. In fact, I insist that you post on here whenever you build your next gaming rig. I promise that I'll be suitably jealous of you, too! :rock:

Nice Rig Panzer, nothing wrong with bragging, very similar to my new rig (see below), should be around $1800 if I get all my rebates (all from MWAVE.com).
Had it about 2 weeks so far, I intend to load up SHIII GWX2.0 on it as soon as I'm done with CRYSIS, OMFG its fast!

(2) CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX 2gb kit (1gb x 2) pc26400 800mhz matched pair 4-4-4-12 240-pin ddr2 dimm ($40 Mail-In Manufacturer Rebate Available from 3/08/08 till 3/14/08)
$186.50


1 EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 nForce 780i SLI, ATX, Intel 775, 3 x PCIE 16x, Dual GB Lan (Retail) VGA OPTION
CORE 2 DUO E8400 3.0G (1333Mhz) $479.89


1 THERMALTAKE armor plus VH6000SWA (silver) aluminum super tower no power supply w/ see through side window front i/o, 230mm fan x 1 & 120mm case fan $226.95

1 APEVIA ATX-ib680w-bl 680w iceberg ul & fcc aluminum power supply for ATX cases $114.00

1 WD 150gb raptor x wd1500ahfd 10000rpm 16mb SATA-150 3.5" w/crystal-clear lens (retail) $279.89

2 BFG BFGE88512GTOC2E GF8800GT 512MB OC2 PCI-E w/HDTV & DVI $299.00 $598.00

1 MICROSOFT Windows vista 32bit home premium 1pk DVD (dsp)#66i-00715 $99.84 $99.84

That Windows XP Media Center Edition 64bit is the WORST possible choice.

You should stick to the common OSs: WinXP Pro SP2 32bit or the Vista 32bit.

XP Media Center is a nightmare for programmers as it raises all sorts of stupid exceptions from the usual use cases of an OS, including for the installation.

sweet rig. couple of suggestions:

1. dump 2x 8800GT(s), that's a huge waste of money from a price-point perspective. ***ONE*** 8800GTX/768 will EAT your 2x GT(s), and then you're not stuck down the road with two "weak" cards and can buy a second GTX when the prices naturally come down.

2. dump Media Center if you plan on playing games.

3. DO NOT RUN STOCK HEATSINKS (unless you plan on UNDERclocking): get a serious aftermarket CPU and GPU heatsink. Artic Silver 5 grease FTW.

4. Use Prime95, ATITOOL (works with Nvidia), and SPEEDFAN to monitor CPU and GPU temps. You might find you need more casefans! Or just upgrade your case to an ANTEC 900 (such a mighty cool case).

No
 

If you want to have a prayer or running SH4 1.4 TMO, SH4 1.4 RFB, SH4UBM and SH3 concurrently on separate monitors you need a stand-alone soundcard to unload your microprocessor for acceptable speed.:rotfl:It might also be helpful not to run Photoshop, Firefox, Excel and avoid doing a rigorous virus scan while you're playing the game(s).

If my system were half that good I'd be a happy camper.

According to my research it seems that a 8800 GT will get near gtx speeds overclocked

Ok ill go with xp Professional.

I like having 2 8800 GT's it means if one breaks I still have the other one.

Yes my build also cost $1,820 + $210 for shipping.

No I am not bragging, im not a hardware techie, I just build pc's for myself and fix other peoples.

I might get an extra gig of ram I am still considering.

Any other questions comments will be answered to as fast as possible.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Memory
 

Be careful. You'll find that 3 1 gig modules are slower than 2. Either buy 2 512s (puts you in RAM prison. To upgrade you would have to throw away RAM) or go all the way to 4 Gig with 2 x 1 gig. That way you keep your dual channel operation going. As soon as you unbalance your chips in the slots your speed takes a nose dive.

I agree with the comment - skip anything XP-64 bit. Go XP 32 bit or if you want to run 64-bit go with Vista. If you are running XP 32 bit 2GB RAM is plenty enough, unless you plan an upgrade to Vista 64. You require a 64 bit OS to take advantage of 4GB RAM, in XP you'll get about 3GB with 4 installed, the 4th is sortof wasted because of 32bit limitations.

And also note that SH4 and most other games do not really take advantage of a quad-core yet. You will get better performance out of a faster dual-core for the same price. However, going quad will make your machine more future-friendly.

Also the question of SLI... there are a surprising number of games that really don't get much benefit from SLI. SLI has the most benefit when running heavy antialiasing, and very high resolutions (1920x1200 and above). A single 8800GT is more than enough to run SH4 at 1680x1050. My 8800GTX is only a touch faster than an 8800GT, and I run 2560x1600, which requires double the video processing power 1680x1050 requires. I run with no AA and I get minimum 30fps. Course for the price of the 8800GT's it makes SLI very affordable.

Also there is a whack of new CPU's coming out soon. These will be faster and require less power to run, and generate less heat. This will also push the prices down on the current CPU's. Also coming soon is the GeForce 9's (the 9600GT is already out). Might want to wait and see what thes new series do to the prices of the current ones, and what the actual performance of the new 9800's will be.