Humanoid

Well they have apparently stopped making them, or at least that's what retailers say.

Indeed it's been going on and on and on and on and on since the opening of the Interplay boards in 2003.

A bootable Linux CD (i.e. an OS that runs off a DVD) might be useful for rescuing stuff if the Windows installation is beyond help.

Best value SSDs these days would be the ones based on the Indilinx controlled, e.g. the G.Skill Falcon, the OCZ Vertex, the Corsair X series, the SuperTalent UltraDrive, the Patriot Torqx, the Crucial M225 ...and probably a few more - all these drives would be pretty much the same and lead the price:performance stakes. Intel X25-M is the market leader and is faster for most uses, and it's priced accordingly, especially given there is a worldwide shortage of them.

Thing is, a Raptor costs pretty much the same as a 64GB SSD these days, so for most applications they'd be rather obsolete. 64GB would easily cover the OS and the games du jour for most people.

What's suitable will depend if you want to replace or simply add to your current drive. For a second drive purely for storage I'd go with a 5400rpm drive like the WD Green series or Samsung F2. For a system drive, if you don't want to spring the cash for an SSD, a WD Black, Samsung F3 or Seagate 7200.12 would be more suitable. Just don't get a Seagate 7200.11 since they were prone to spontaneously bricking.

All I can remember of MoTB is creating a remarkably ineffective Rogue/Wizard and having to rest after every fight in the opening dungeon. Had to join my queue of Stuff to Replay Eventually.

I've had a Diamond S3 Virge DX and Diamond Riva128 (the first ever mainstream nVidia chip!) and two Diamond TNT2s before the company sort of went under. Leadtek GF3 Ti200, Sparkle GF4 Ti4200 also still alive, but since then I've had a pretty rotten run, Radeon 9800 Pro died, Gainward GeForce 7900GT died, HIS X1950XT fan crapped out, 8800GT ok now with a 3rd party cooler.

It's a limitation of 32-bit addressing, so nothing to do with what generation OS it is. Calculator shows 2^32 = 4,294,967,296 = ~4.3GiB. Subtract what's eaten up by your video card and you get that 3.25GB number Windows tells you. (I know it's not a very good explanation but I'm just a consumer, not a techie) WinXP 64, Vista64 and Win7-64 would all see your total RAM normally.

Did you install the 32-bit version? You'll need to go 64-bit to see more than that.

Another simple test would be to open up the side of your case and blow a desk fan into it and see if problems persist.

I guess rabbit chucking is out too then.

That's probably only true because there's less wear from twice as many things being used half as often. The best Blu-ray writers at the moment are also measurably the best DVD and CD writers in terms of burn quality and reliability.

Probably easier in lands where you have larger markets and where distributors and retailers gouge you less for exclusivity arrangements and such. Me, I use a CC a lot for ordering bike parts from the UK (which is often a 50% saving or more compared to buying locally), and sometimes PC parts from the US. All tax-free for values under $1000AUD to boot. I can import an Intel SSD for slightly over $300AUD - which includes an extortionate $50 or so delivery. Locally however, retailers are asking for $450-500AUD, so you can understand the extent of this price gouging. :| Likewise, I've just bought a pair of bike tyres from the UK for $45AUD each from the UK, with free delivery. The local retailer wants $120 each.

DVD drive prices are only just starting to recover after a big price spike midyear (allegedly one of the major component manufacturers closed/burned down), but they'll probably never get as cheap as they were a year ago ever again. Bad news is that in the meantime, Pioneer discontinued their inhouse manufacturing of the drives, so the current model Pioneers are no longer the clear cut best choice anymore. And yeah, the Sony-NEC is probably one of the better drives on the market now (not the pre-NEC ones though).

This is the main point of contention really, the investigation after that collision was pretty damning about her level of underpreparedness. Something about falling asleep in the middle of one of the country's busiest shipping lanes, and failing to set up the equipment that should be providing alerts that, you know, there's a big huge cargo ship on a collision course with your dinghy. I'd have no problems with anyone doing this who is demonstrably fit to do so, but this particular case seems to be asking for trouble.

Yeah, games keep detecting my Sound Blaster AWE32 as a Sound Blaster Pro. As for Far Cry, I think my old X1950XT video card came with a voucher for it. I never bothered redeeming it....

I derived more entertainment reading the anti-walkthrough than from the game itself, but that required the game to exist in the first place. So another plus point there.

I can't identify the power supply from the photo, but if it's a generic one you might be best served getting a better quality one, which generally would come with longer cables anyway.

GT300 mass availability won't be until Q1 2010 at the earliest, so waiting not viable for a current build. Since the proposed system is an i7, it will be running on the Intel X58/P55 so Crossfire is going to be available no matter what. Whether SLI is available officially varies by the specific motherboard model, although many cheaper ones are perfectly capable of SLI despite not being certified for it (and consequently you won't be provided with the required SLI bridge with the board). Bear in mind however some of the cheapest P55 motherboards can only run the second PCI-E slot at 4x, if you're determined to go with a multi-card solution, pick a P55 board that runs the second slot at 8x, or an X58 board that runs both at 16x. That said, between a multi-GPU and a single-GPU solution, I would always advocate choosing the latter (given sufficient performance, and the R58xx most certainly fulfils that criterion); for a number of reasons including but not limited to: 1) Scaling issues in multi-GPU setups - the performance gain you get from adding the second card is not really predictable and can vary dramatically depending on the application it's running 2) Logistics of setup and added complexity when trying to diagnose any problems which may occur 3) Power consumption/heat (and potentially reliability issues as a consequence) 4) Expense, not only in the initial outlay, but in having to retire two cards at the same time eventually. Summary of the broadly available performance mid-range options, from low to highest: GTS250 / R4850 / R5750 - I consider this the baseline for a budget gaming system. Between these, the GTS250 is the oldest tech, being essentially a rebadged 8800GT from circa 2007. The R4850 was the entry-level gaming champion for a good while and after rebates and such can still work out to be the best value in price-performance terms. However the newly released R5750 is probably now a clear winner, by hitting the same general price point (same RRP) and offering all the new-fangled current tech. R5770 / GTX260 / R4870 / GTX275 / R4890 - Performing in roughly that order (but dependent on application), these are the midrange options. Note while the R5770 is relatively costly in context of its absolute performance, it's the only one in this range that supports DX11, and may have greater scope for improvement with new driver releases since it's the newest. R5850 / GTX285 - The ATi card here is marginally faster and a fair bit cheaper, making it generally the better buy, unless one desires the exclusive nVidia features (PhysX, 3D glasses) over DX11 support (and Eyefinity). R5870 / GTX295 - The GTX295 is basically two GTX275s and comes with the same caveats as that card, in addition to the multi-GPU issues aforementioned. It's also quite a bit dearer, although in absolute terms it is generally a bit faster.

Headliners for me, but stuff everyone would already have anyway (and excluding previously mentioned titles): HoMM3 IL-2 Sturmovik And the miscellaneous pile: Beneath A Steel Sky Capitalism Pro Pinball (I'm bored with the free Windows one) Seven Kingdoms (can't remember if the sequel was any good) Lords of Magic Republic Oddworld and er... Battle Chess?

XFX's main selling point isn't the card itself (it's identical to any other manufacturer's), but what they call "double lifetime" warranty - that is, lifetime warranty for you, and transferrable should you decide to sell it (which means it has higher resale value than equivalent brands). North America only, so I've never been able to consider it a selling point personally. Nothing wrong with Sapphire as far as I know, of all vendors they've been in the "red team" longer than any - in the old days, the ATi branded cards were actually made by Sapphire (and I suspect Alan's present card would be).

Even a 8x slot will drop hardly any performance, it's in the single figure range in terms of percentage.

My agenda would be more to use the SW licence to push a genre I want revived, rather than wanting a Star Wars game per se. A new space sim, graphic adventure or turn based tactical game with the SW label glued on would do me just fine.

I've heard anecdotal reports of people running ok in XP (though performance might be suboptimal), not sure if it required the 9.10 beta drivers. Alternatively, have you looked into Win7's XP mode to see if it would be suitable for you?