Well, it's been awhile and it took a complete HD meltdown to kick me in the ass (and put me further into debt) to get my new machine built... and boy howdy, is it fast!

I thought my old machine was darn respectable, but the new upgrades have doubled its speed.

Since my cousin works for a huge corporate computer supplier here in Seattle, he was able to let me return my almost two-year old 6600GT's and get a pair of 7600GT's. He gave me $100 apiece for them, which I thought was a gift.

Then he called me and said he just had lunch with the AMD rep and had some Athlon 64 FX-60 Dual Core "samples," of which I was able to procure for $300... a helluva deal. The 7600's gave me a 40% boost in graphics performance and the FX-60 gave me another 40%, for a roughly 95% overall increase. (Wow!)

So, even though I might still suck at FPS, I'm at least back to playing them again. :-)

Trying Half-Life 2 right now and re-trying Doom 3. In a few days I'll have the whole thing set up and tweaked and should see you all for BF2, or 2142, whichever.

Til then...