It's taken six months but I've finally been able to put together a new computer. A week ago my two oldest brothers actually remembered to bring the graphics card and power supply which were supposed to have been Christmas presents when they came for a visit, which meant I could order the rest of the parts I needed. I now have:
GIGABYTE Intel P35 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU
1 GB Kingston DDR2-800 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT Graphics Card
250 GB Seagate Barracuda HDD
Lite-On DVD+R DL Burner
Everything but the DVD drive is new and I also installed Windows XP on the system, rather than Windows 2000 which I had been using before. I figured it was about time to upgrade since more and more software is no longer supporting 2000 and XP is as stable as it's going to get. I've been happy with the change so far since XP is very similar to 2000 but has some handy new features. And, like, I didn't have to reboot three times just to enable DualView when installing the graphics drivers! I was shocked and amazed when it just did it without needing to reboot at all. 2000 has served me well but I think I'm going to like all of XP's little improvements.
おやすみ
The system itself has been great as well. HD 720p anime plays silky smooth on this baby even during fast action scenes and I was getting around 100 fps in Guild Wars with all the graphics settings on max—while in windowed mode with other stuff running in the background. This makes me wonder if I could watch 720p anime on one monitor while playing Guild Wars on the other. I think it would be a toss-up between my computer or my multi-tasking abilities choking first.
