I just built myself a new rig because my laptop was really unable to play even the most basic of games well...

I'm going to install the office programs DELL provided on my rig and was considering puting my old Windows XP 32bit on my laptop in place of my Vista 32bit to squeeze a little extra performance out of my laptop

Will it make a difference or am I just wasting my time?

Specs are as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 ghz / 2gb 667mhz ram / 8600m gt@500mhz-256mb

I use my laptop in classes and at the library and besides Civ4 I'm not putting any other games on it

get the Corsair 650W TX or 550W TX

I have the 650W TX it is by far the best part in my rig

Otherwise your build is quality

According to System Requirements lab (Website) my AMD 9950 at 2.8ghzis equvialent to 6.61 ghz single core

Don't know what that means necessarily... but yeah I don't notice faster computing over my brother's Intel e6600

Although I got to say I notice alot more stability while running multiple apps, can run some of my Engineering apps while playing games withough any drop in FPS

You can't go wrong with the 4850, either. You can get it for $84.99 after a mail-in rebate on newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150337

I assume you probably don't game at 1920 x 1200 resolution. If that's the case, that card will certainly give you some longevity.

I don't think Intel sales processors below 2.5ghz anymore, but yeah it would, but it depends on what games you want to play...

If u want to run Empire Total War at "good" settings then your looking at 3ghz dual core or 2.8ghz quad

But you also want 2-4 gigs of RAM and a bare minimum graphics card of a 9800gt or 4830 to play games on decent settings

On my essentially brand new ACER 23in monitor I have a dead pixel right at eye level on the screen... I wouldn't care if it was off in a corner but its right above where I would have a crosshair in most shooting games and it is driving me crazy

I've tried several methods of fixing it like pressure and those flashy image tests but it isn't seeming to work...

one thing though... it changes only to red and blue, but no other color so I'm assuming there is hope in fixing it yet

any tips or advice?

Is it safe to have an unfiltered fan blowing directly on the motherboard and videocard?

I have the Cooler master 590 case and currently have 2 120mmHD Cage fans (filitered) in the front, a 120mm exhaust in back, and 2 low speed 140mm exhaust on top...

the 2 140mm fan ports on the side are currentlly covered up on the side by acrylic sheets that i put in

the case temp is at 33 C (read off of mobo, so probably lower yet) but my processor is at 52 C under load and when I overclock to 3ghz it spikes up to 63 C, I was hoping an intake over the CPU cooler would help lower temps

Can I expect to see better performance out of my amd 9950 in the future as more programs use 4+ cores?

for $110 I can't really complain, desktop apps run alot betterthan my Intel e6600 on my other PC

For school work I can run multiple data sheets, charts and programs without freezing something up, but as far as games go I see worse performance in games like CSS (eventhough it supports 4 cores)

Will i7s be cheap next summer? if so I would like to upgrade to an i7 build and crossfire 4850s next summer

I'm running Vista 64bit and I'm not having problems with performance, I can completely max out almost all my games at reasonable FPS, it just won't fill the whole screen up, I've just started playing in Windowed mode, seems to fix the scaling problems

CSS runs in full screen, thats the only game I really play competively, sountil I figure it out I guess I'm fine

I've had numerous problems with auto-detect settings, most of the time I get warnings about being below required hardware or auto-detecting low settings even though my rig I would say is at least above average

I mean, Empire Total War runs on a mix of Ultra/High settins (No AA) eventhough the game auto-detected low, it auto-detected medium on my laptop which has a nVidia 8600m gt

And on Fallout 3 and COH the game refuses to fill the whole screen no matter what I do in the graphics options or in the frequently crashing Catalyst...

Anyone else having these problems with the 4800 series? Is it the drivers?

I can't complain for $100 but its really frustrating