A 7300 may net you a little lower power consumption because it's 90nm based rather than 110nm. This might be offset by the extra 64mb of ram and slightly higher clock speed though. In either case, if power consumption is important I'd underclock and undervolt the card I got (guide for bios...
You don't have to wait for the midrange cards. You can get a good Core 2 Duo system for about $900.
PNY 8800GTS $410 before rebate
G.Skill 2x1GB $195
Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3 $135
Core 2 Duo E6300 $189
Total $929
You sure about that? Gamepro reports that it just requires Vista and the DX10 rumors were just that, rumors. They may be mistaked though.
http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=88368&AFC-HSUIT&ATTR=DIGG
I have an MX518 but the concept is the same. I run at 1600dpi and set all my games to match the speed to one that I feel comfortable with at that dpi. I change dpi all the time in game though. Sometimes just to mix it up and sometimes because I'm trying to do something that requires precision...
Getting another stick of ram isn't going to help you. First thing I would do is reinstall the game. If that doesn't fix it try reinstalling all drivers. From there all you can do is a fresh XP instal.
How's your performance in other games? I assumed it was normal.
It really depends on the game. Some games look fairly decent at low settings so turning them down doesn't bother me much. Other look like complete ass at lowest settings. It also depends on your monitor. If you have a CRT you may not want to have to recallabrate it depending on res and refresh...
I have no idea what the people in this thread are talking about. Just reading it has made me feel sorry for what the gaming community has become. That was a excellent game and thanks for posting it.
Edit: My comments were not directed at the last the last post by FreiDOg.
It's normal for the cpu to be at 100% in old games like 1.6. Your video card is beyond fast enough to handle the game leaving your cpu as the limit while it pumps out instructions to the video card,
If I can lug my Chair, rig and 19" crt up 3 flights of stair once a month to go to the local lan party I'm sure you can manage it without some elaborate device to do it for you.
I made the framework for a basic text based rpg a while back borrowing a lot of idea's form the Wrath Lands tutorial. All you need is some basic C++ that can be leaned in a couple of weeks and you can begin to make some pretty decent stuff.
I need a sound card for under $100, perferable under $50, that can output sound in 5.1 through optical. Sound quality isnt really a big thing with me as I'm not by any means an audio file but it has to be at least as good as my onboard realtek AC850. Any sugestions?
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet but I didn't see it so I'm gonna say it anyways :). EVGA's warrenty also covers overclocking and bios flashes so you dont have to worry about screwing up and breaking the card while overclocking.
Those specs are way overblown to run vista. We arent talking about gaming here, all you need is a moderatly fast processor, decent amounts of ram, and a video card that supports WGF1.0 (dx9).
I think the specs to see all that vista has to offer would be more like this.
Any modern CPU (Intel 2.6Ghz+, AMD Any A64 based processor)
1GB Ram hopefully more
Geforce 5 series or ATi 9xxx or better
You're counting PCMark05 in your productivity results. That benchmark is anything but productive. Also when's the last time your thought word was running slow?