So let's talk about my new PC

You want some specs for it? Of course you do! First question to ask is, "What do I want to do with this PC?" The answer is this. I need that game more than air.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965p-S3. Some might point and laugh because I didn't get the DS3 but it just had things I didn't need so I'll keep the cash for myself.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E600 chip. I'm told you can overclock the hell out of these things but I'm too much of a chicken to try.

Memory: DDR2-800 dual channel. This was my big splurge item. I could've stuck with the 667 or something lower but to hell with it, I wanted it some scorching memory this time. My last upgrade I splurged on the hard drives, this time the memory and I think that is probably the better investment anyway.

Video card: Leadtek 7950GT, 512Megs of RAM. I know the 8800s are just out and only cost $35-50 more but I figured when EQ2 (my uber secret game of shame) looks like this then I think it was a pretty good investment.

Hard Drives: Nothing fancy, just some SATA 7200RPM drives

OS: Windows Vista. Despite the UAC being a complete pain in the backside I truly don't mind having to click confirmations that yes indeed I do want to open up that program for the 100th time. I may have been an early adopter but I'm not completely stupid. This is Windows and it is NEW which separate are bad enough when it comes to computers but when put together it morphs into something much worse than the sum of its parts.

Gotta give props though about the user interface still being pretty simple, and the fact that during an install you can now use CDs or USB keychains to load 3rd party drives (thus removing the need for floppy disks forever) brings small little tinge of warmth to my bad empty heart.

Quick benchmarks:

Doom 3 on my old system (an Athlon64 3000+ with a Radeon 9800 Pro) gave me about 32 frames per second at 1024x768 and 2xAA.

The new system gives me 97 frames per second at those same settings. When I cranked the details to ultra high maximum the frames still maintained about 32 frames per second.