Groltz said:
1) I'm still contemplating which soundcard to get. The newly introduced Creative X-Fi's are starting to garner rave reviews, I hate to say, and I will likely go that route. My second choice would be that punky card that Merc likes.
Well, I can't help but chime in on this one: the X-Mystique is
GREAT for media applications. Jaw-dropping. I own three of them at this point (everywhere I can have surroundsound), and the fact that I was willing to blow $300 on sound cards might be very telling. BUT it probably isn't for you. First, it needs to be connected by a Digital cable to an external surroundsound processor - either a home theater receiver or something like one of those boutique high-end sets of computer speakers.
The other thing is, some of the reviews and comments I've seen suggest that its awesomeness is diminished in certain games; EAX isn't fully supported in certain titles.
That said, I hear Creative Labs makes its sound cards from nuns and baby ducks and the ground-up souls of the victims of 9/11, and if you buy their hardware, the terrorists and republicans have won.
Groltz said:
2) Two Raptors in RAID-0?!?
So... there's a
good hard drive somewhere in this system that you'll be storing a Ghost image of the your "Recipe for Disaster" on? A Samsung 200GB costs all of $95 and can contain your whole array.
Groltz said:
3) Nvidia video card?!? More boos, more hisses.
Actually, in a way, I sympathize.
Only in a way, though, since I'm pretty sure Creative buys its ingredients from nvidia.
If I'm as objective as I can be, the 7800 sounds like it's a far better card than anything ATI has out right now, at least from a performance standpoint. Power consumption and noise though... yikes. The focus of my complaints about nVidia grahics cards has always been that they get way too hot (even in 2D). I don't want to think about how warm this new part is, especially since it's back to having a single slot cooling system.
Current graphics cards are like a whole other reason to overspend on Power Supplies. The requirements are edging into "insane". There's a 600somethingW PSU in my HTserver right now. It's running 12 hard drives and an Athlon64 - a real server-type load. You've got, um, 2 hard disks, 2 CD ROMs, a high-end processor. If you had a normal graphics card, I'd stick in a quality 300 or 350W PSU and call it a day!
Anyway, I've been toying with buying a couple more Socket 939 machines, maybe something in a dual core - I really like my Soltek K890Pro-939s with all those yummy SATA ports on 'em... but every time I look down that path, I get annoyed with the state of midrange ATI graphics cards.
For $120 I can buy an X700. For $140 I can get an X800. For $170 I can get an X800GT (and I'm not quite sure what the difference is...). $200 is my cutoff for a midrange card. I won't spend more money than that.
Thing is, am I ever going to be able to tell the difference between any of the above? Ever? I can tell the difference between a 9600Pro and a 9800Pro in Doom 3. Fine. I have an X700 now, and an X800 and unless I bump my screen resolution to a setting I'd never normally use... they're exactly the same as far as I can tell (Doom 3 would be way cooler as a subjective test if every damned thing in the whole game wasn't $#%#% black)
It sounds like I'll be OK with the X700, but there it is - the X800 is only a few dollars more! Arg! Why give us that choice?