its that time again

[[AK]JD]

My current P4 3.01 has served me well these past couple years and its now time to put it on ebay along with my 9800 AIW pro. I am looking at replaceing my current setup with the following.

Current:
ASUS P4P800
P4 3.01 (not sure which revision)
ATI 9800 PRO AIW 128
Enermax 350 PS

New:
ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe
P4 3.4 prescott 2MB 90nm em64
BFG 6800 Ultra OC 256 PCI-E
Fortron AX500-A 500w ps

I'd like to hear oppinions on my choices and if anyone sees any issues with any of the components I've listed please chime in.

Edit: upon doing some more research it appears the Radeon 850XT PE is alot faster than the 6800 U. I haven't yet seen any benchmarks with the 6800 Ultra OC... and roughly the same price.
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Fintail

[[AK]Hylander]

Oh sure.. you couldn't tell me this last week prior to me placing that order at newegg.com??!?!?!?

Just bustin' your chops.

[Katanas Blade]

I'm running a somewhat similar config to your current rig and one suggestion I'd have is getting two of the Western Digital Raptor HD's and set 'em up in RAID config. Even with my system being a year old I'm still loading maps faster then 99% of the other players in BF2. It's quite nice being able to spawn and grab my vehicle of choice (usually the blackhawk..) before most people have even gotten to the spawn screen.

[[AK]JD]

Agreed the raptor 10k's kick some serious butt, As you can see by the components I've chosen the piggy bank is going to be pretty much empty. I am even reusing my PC4000 memory.
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aromed vaporizers

[[AK]JD]

DOH, when did they come out with DDR2 and 3 looks like I can add ram to my list. Muskin 1GB PC-6400 DDR2-800 dual channel. I won't be playing any BF2 tonight, I've ordered the ram and should have it tomorrow... man that 6800 Ultra OC looks sweet!
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Ford Granada (North America) specifications

[[AK]StitchJones]

WD Raptor drives are a tough act to follow. it's just annoying they cost so much more and the capacity is so much less. I think that FightClub has a few of these guys in one of his boxes, or work boxes.

Tough break on the memory JD, but that's cool you got the Ultra version of the 6800. Very slick.

[[AK]FiGHT*CLuB]

I do run the raptors. They are very fast and I love them. Only problem with them is they have a very bad reputation of dieing after a few months. Its hit or miss with them. I missed because one died about 2 weeks ago so I have to send it back which I haven’t gotten around to yet.

Defiantly don’t want to store important info on them. but for gaming and programs, they cant be beat.

[[AK]StitchJones]

Gee Whiz fight, you haven't hit level 3 yet on the sprinkler thing. Your showing a lack of dedication. You need to get on the ball

[[AK]JD]

update, got my gear on Monday, found out needed ddr2 ram (I don't read instructions) bought some OCZ pc-4200 and it don't work. Talk to vendor, Oh flash the bios they say and it will recognize it. Well alittle tough to flash a bios on a system that wont post. Put another ram in it he says, If I could do that we wouldn't be having this conversation jeeesh. So swapping the OCZ with some Kingston tomorrow and see how it goes..
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Chrysler Sebring (sedan) history

[[AK]JD]

Ugggg......

Ok, so I got the kingston ram installed and the system booted up right away, how nice now im excited. Get all my drivers squared away and hop on Ventrilo say Hi to Beast and double click BF2 executable splash screen, black screen ... desktop... SH$t ! Ok try again... No luck. Well long story short I removed, cleaned reinstalled the Nvidia drivers, then the omega and nothing worked. Used DriveCleaner as per Ab's sollution no luck. So, the only thing left to try is to reinstall BF and see if that helps, I'm thinking that there maybe some remnence of the old driver cache or something in the game but im just guessing now. What a freakin bummer. Day 4 without playing.
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buy vaporizers

[[AK]Bribo]

From the tweak guide I posted:

Launching/Loading Issues: The most common problem with BF2 is that the game crashes to desktop or goes to a black screen when you first launch it. The reason for this is either incompatible hardware (make sure you meet all the minimum specs), or more usually the fact that you're not running at the default Windows XP refresh rate (60Hz). By default the game tries to launch at 800x600@60Hz initially, so your system must be able to run that same resolution and refresh rate, otherwise the game will abort. If you are using any refresh rate override program/method, disable it (e.g. if you're using Refresh Force, click the 'Restore Original Settings' button and apply). Alternatively, see the Advanced Tweaking section of the guide for details on how to set a different startup resolution, in case your graphics card/monitor simply cannot do 800x600@60Hz resolution. Once you've got the game running, you can then change the resolution to suit your taste in the in-game settings, and importantly you can select a higher refresh rate. Then you can reapply any refresh rate override and the game will launch without any problems. To set a non-standard resolution such as 1280x1024 see the Advanced Tweaking section.

[[AK]JD]

Thanks Bribo, I played around with resolutions but never went down to a 60hz refresh rate, I'll give it a shot tonight.
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Chrysler Canada history

[[AK]JD]

the reinstall fixed the problem... my guess is there's some type of residual settings in bf2 based on video card drivers or something.
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synthetic weed

[[AK]Hardnok]

Grats on the new hardware JD.

I heard Cruiser say WD raptors suck with his watercooling. They are very loud while the BOX he runs is virtually silent. Couple Barracuda 7200.7 in raid = silent. Of course with those new P4's one has to use jet turbines to keep em cool so that probably not a problem for u guys. To bad they didnt have a place to set your coffee near em to keep it hot!

[[AK]Hardnok]

OK, Cruz was on my pc yesterday and posted this above post under my account. Just so you know..lol...anyway, congrats on the new machine!