Hardware
ATI shot their own feet!
For starters, I’m still waiting for the Q6600 processor to drop in price, so that i can get my system upgraded.
I’m still somewhat undecided on whether or not i should replace my faithful GeForce 7800 GTX card yet, and get a GeForce 8800 GTX. The thing is, i was kind of hoping/expecting that ATi would come out with their next gen graphics card around now, and that it would blow away the competition from nVidia. So that they would drop their prices a bit, making it somewhat affordable.
However, this article, shows something different, the new ATI card called ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX failed. It can almost perform the same as the 8800 GTX, and i think everyone was hoping it would blow it away. Theres a lot of reasons why it could be wrong, the 8800 GTX is being tested with a driver thats a bit more tested since its already on the marked, while the ATi card is being tested on a RC driver. Now i guess i will have to wait for nVidia to release the 9800 GTX series, which should make the 8800 GTX series be a bit less pricy :)
Antec Performance P180B
I just got a new case for my PC, which i am currently (re)building, basically the only thing i will keep from the old one, is the hard drives. Since everything else have been replaced recently. And i am just awaiting more price drops on Quad core processors from Intel. Anyways, i got this 1000 Watt NorthQ silent PSU, which i will need for when i buy a new graphics card.
I fittede it in my new case from Antec, a P180-B which i really really like since the second i saw the mechanical drawing to it :)
I took some pictures as i unwrapped the case, forgot to take some during and after i sat in the NorthQ PSU. They will come later :)
All i need now is for my new hardware to drop sufficient in price, so that i wont have to go to bed crying over buying it too expensive :)
That should happen shortly, since Intel plans on the price for the Q6600 Processor to drop to 266$ during 2007 Q3.
Update: i honestly belive they have mistakenly sent me a P182 instead of a P180B since my new kabinet has all the features of the P182 that are “fixes” from the P180 =/ The box for it does say P180B though Look for yourself here.
Soundblaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS
I got my self one :)
No particular reason to why though, since i already had a nice and fully working Sound blaster Audigy 2 ZS. I think the main reason was the fact that the X-Fi had the 64 MB RAM on it, which among other things, allows it to free the CPU of some processing, plus i heard “rumors” about how inferior it was compared to the Audigy 2.
So, is it actually worth the money?
Well, if you asked me the day i got it, or even sometime the same evening, i would have said no, simply because of the hassle i had installing it. Its simply because the way Microsoft and creative choose things to be.
See, in the old days you had to manually assign a IRQ to a piece of hardware in your ISA/PCI ports but windows has taken over for this ow, which is a good thing, but Creative does not share Microsoft’s idea on how they can share IRQs.
Anyways what happened was that Windows Vista, which i use, wouldn’t “let go” of the Soundblaster Audigy 2 drivers, and when i finally manged to get it to forget them something was corrupted in the core somehow in vista so that it wouldn’t allow me to install the X-Fi drivers OR install the Audigy drivers!
This resulted in me having to reinstall Windows Vista. After which it worked like nothing ever happened. I installed the driver i got from creative.com and i got the full effect of the sound. I was like .. OMG is this possible ? i actually made a difference, i heard details in game i did not hear before ( Company Of Heroes in this case ) well, just everything was awesome. So now I’m thrilled about it :)
Thermalright Ultra-120
Well, in short, i decided to go to a more silent way of cooling my CPU, since my old intel stock fan startede making quite a bit of noise when i fully used my CPU.
Anyways, i ordred a Ultra-120 from overclockers.co.uk since no danish retail stores had any home at the moment. Below youll find some pictures from the installment :)
So .. was it worth the money? Indeed .. the 19db from the Papst is nothing compared to the 45db or so the intel stock fan could produce. Also the idle temprature for the intel stock cooler was around 47 degrees celcius, now its more like 38. And working temprature with a closed case ( no air ventilation in it at all atm.=/ ) is still lower than the intel stock ever was :) Im very happy with it :)
