After several aggravating days working on this, I weeded it down to my old 6800 ultra vid card that crashed my computer.

So, I now have a new vid card and all is back up and running. I got the best deal I could find locally for a card that is Directx 10 ready, a BFG GeForce 8600 GT OC for $139 after rebates.

Here's a link on the deal, in case anyone else needs it:
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_in...uct_code=346312

wow thats a great deal glad to see you got everything fixed and running

Wow Steel,

Welcome back , glad to see you solved the problem so quick.

Now get on the battlefield with us...LOL... the rifle server has been busy, you even missed me in a COD2 match..(stop laughing). I threatened the guys into not taking screen shots of the final score, due to my score

T/A6Pak

Yay Steel back on the battlefield =)

We would be lost without you. Welcome back!

how do you like that card Steel??? Is there a huge improvement in graphics and fps with it?? i looking at doing a new build myself soon and was looking at that card as a possibility. It would be nice to get some reviews by someone that is using one. I am still working on a 754 socket amd 64 3400+ and a 7800 gs oc agp nvidia card myself. Works great for what i need it for but is maxed out on some of my games already.

I ended up paying a whopping amount for a 8800GTX because the reivews of video card suggested there was no "mid-tier" at the moment. That is, in the past you could get something in the mid-end market for a gaming video card. However, at the moment, it's either "high" or "low", with the high end cards outpacing the low-end card by tons, but the price being tons more too. It used to be the mid-end cards were the best bang for buck and was only moderately outpaced by the high end cards...now you something like the 8600 gives the better bang for buck, but it is well outpaced by the high end cards...in performance and price.

Full article on tom's hardware guide...

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/24/hd_...d_geforce_8600/

or, cut to the chase (i.e. the conclusion)

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/24/hd_...600/page10.html

Played some mwcm and stocks today. It ran fine, and the colors are incredibly more brilliant than they were on my 6800 ultra. I'm running it in 8x anti-aliasing right now and it's smooth as glass.

But haven't unlocked fps yet, letting it top out at 60 fps just 'cause I'm a little skittish right now. Having just reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled everything, I just don't want another glitch for a long while. :-)

The reason I went for this lesser card was plain economics. Since I retired, every penny needs to stretch. I absolutely had to get the biggest bang for the lowest bucks.

Two years ago, when I built my current system, I was making the big-bucks, so I went state-of-the-art all the way. The 6800 Ultra was brand new, cost me just about $600 (US dollars). Funny thing though, within just a few months, the 6800 Ultra was ancient history. So, even if I did still have the big-bucks today, I doubt I'd be going top-of-the-line, lol.

I usually go by the all Games FPS summary:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_200...4&chart=318

The 8600 doesn't look bad at about half the performance of the 8800 GTX and twice the performance of the 6800.

Also, look how well the 7950 GX2 (a single card with two GPUs) does compared to 8800.

Old Man Mike

Thanks..i'll check out those reviews this week..i have been hoping for more competition from ATI to help knock nvidia's prices down a bit on the top of the line. I had this build planned for this October but ended up using the money i was saving to buy a New Jeep, my old gmc jimmy finally decided to give up the ghost.But my current rig runs great , just leaves me out of the running for any futher upgrades aside from one more upgrade in the cpu and i can't see that being a smart move to spend cash to upgrade a 754 socket proc.

thanks for the info again.

i tried to edit my post but can't seem to do it..soooooooooooo

i was thinking...scary eh??

Is it worth a small upgrade to the higher proc ...amd 3700 754 socket(there pretty cheap) and maybe O/C'ing my graphics card. i have been playing around and got it 50 mhz over default settings from 400 to 450 and i was able to bump memory bus up 30 and it tested stable. I did see my Gpu temps pop up to 60c and they usually max out at 52-53c. i have a tonne of cooling in my case. i'm just afraid of frying my graphics card... and i have never overclocked before..

I'd guess your system would do a simple lock up long before you cooked it. There's also probably a utility to test your video cards temperature? YOu could check that after a gaming session if you're worried.

Canuck, since the vid card you have is already OC'd (7800 gs oc), watch out about pushing it farther. It's not just the heat, but the more it's overclocked, the more amps it is drawing from your power supply -- actually, that's where the added heat is coming from. But if you have a beefy power supply, 500watts perhaps, it should be okay there.

My processor is an AMD FX-55 (was also top-of-the line, $1,000 when I bought it, lol). It's only doing 2.61GHz, but plays coduo and cod2 just fine. Besides, I have just one 19" monitor and am fine with fps 60 and above, but don't need/can't see any difference over 125fps.

Sounds like your rig (and mine) will serve just fine until we really have to go to Directx 10. Looks like all the games coming out through as far as we can see into next year will still run on Directx 9.0c. Good reason to sit and wait til Vista and etc get some stability and support.