thoughts on a PC upgrade

[DontSayBanana]

Sorry, not spending $800 on a handgun.

But what a freakin' awesome handgun it would be.

[Caliga]

A gun is only as awesome as its wielder.  In my case, that means any gun is amazingly awesome.

[derspiess]

With a Glock, you won't actually hit anyone.

Anyway, mine holds 17 rounds, so I'm bound to hit something

[Caliga]

Anyway, mine holds 17 rounds, so I'm bound to hit something

That's a common prejudice levied against the Glock.  Not sure why, as I had no problems with accuracy the one time I fired a Glock.

[derspiess]

That's a common prejudice levied against the Glock.  Not sure why, as I had no problems with accuracy the one time I fired a Glock.

I think it's because Glocks are (or at least were) a favorite of gangstas/thugs, who are not known for their marksmanship. 

My 17 is probably more accurate than I am, and although it's only 9mm, the +P+ self-defense ammo (which the Glock is designed to handle) should provide plenty of stopping power

The wife loves shooting it, and tends to be more accurate with it than I am. 

[Caliga]

*ahem* I started a thread just for this topic in the main forum.

[Valdemar]

*ahem* I started a thread just for this topic in the main forum.

This is languish.. watcha expect?

V

[Caliga]

  I just figured spiess hadn't noticed the new thread yet.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

And having more than 4gb of RAM is nice, as it speeds up Windows boot&shutdown, if you have a 64bit Windows, but since most games are not 64bit, you can't really use the RAM.
Empire Total War was modified to allow the use of more than 4gb of RAM, but aside that, there's not much improvement to be made.

Only assuming, as I did earlier, that Cal is not planning on doing anything in the background while playing games or running multiple instances at once.  EVE and Firefox, for instance, can gobble RAM in a hurry.

[derspiess]

I just figured spiess hadn't noticed the new thread yet.

We should have a gun subforum to prevent further confusion

[Caliga]

Marti would love that. 

[Caliga]

So I had done some review reading and was going to pull the trigger on an HD 5850, till I found out that they are now selling for like $80 over MSRP, because Nvidia couldn't get their fucking act together to get Fermi out for Christmas... so the current HD 5800/5900 line has no real competition and card supply has consequently been too low to keep up with demand--the Geforce 200 line seems to be inferior in every way to the comparable HD 5700-5900 lines.

I suspect it might be better to wait for Fermi to hit the streets... unless it's also a disaster, that oughta push prices down on the ATI cards.

[Grey Fox]

Buying an ATI card is always a mistake.

[Caliga]

Buying an ATI card is always a mistake.

I think it's a bit shortsighted to assume the playing field permanently remains static.  Every time I do a PC upgrade I always check ATI vs. Nvidia, AMD vs. Intel, etc.  That's why I have done an AMD build, for example, though my last 4 have been Intel.  The AMD build was quite a good system at the time.

[Grey Fox]

ATI's problem will remain the same as long as their driver building team sucks and/or game dev don't bother to optimize for it.