The home PC upgrade is making progress. The next item on the shopping list after the CPU and power supply upgrades consisted of a video card upgrade. I accomplished that two weeks ago. I put in an ATI based 5770 graphics card with 1GB of RAM on board. I wanted a 5830 based card, but the graphics chip for that card is relatively new and cards are hard to come by. So I went with the older 5770. It isn't too bad. It is significantly more powerful than the GeForce 7600GT that it replaced.
So have I noticed any differences? Yes. My son and I play flight simulator. We have Microsoft's FSX and also X-plane 9. With both games, we can crank up the complexity and the video card eats it like a goat will eat grass.
So what's next on the list? I need the following:
- More RAM
- Two 1TB hard drives to replace the 250GB and 500GB drives in the system
- Windows 7
The drives will probably come next. The RAM and Windows 7 purchase will be made at approximately the same time. The computer currently has 4GB of RAM. I'm going to max it out with 8GB and then get Windows 7 64-bit installed. Windows XP can't use the addtional 4GB of RAM, but I
can use the extra 2TB of disk space. Eventually one of the new hard drives will be used as the master hard drive for Windows 7. Western Digital makes a 2TB drive, but that drive is still expensive. If it drops in price, I'd like that drive to be my main drive. So I may end up with a 2TB and 1TB drive instead of two 1TB drives. I currently have two 1TB drives in the system and I love it. You can never have enough disk space. And when you do, you just end up using it.
Last night I was thinking to myself, why am I spending so much money on an upgrade? I was at Wal-Mart the other day and I saw a pretty decent eMachines computer for just under $400....... It had a multi-core CPU, 6GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive..... Hmmm.... Why
am I doing this? I guess I like building stuff. I don't know. A frustrated Lego builder? I haven't purchased an assembled computer in probably a dozen years. All the other computers that I have, I have pieced together myself. Yup. I'm a geek. Pure and simple.
1 comment:
Jeez, this is why I should have had children. I need that auxiliary brain to operate my computer. Too late now.
If you like to let other people build stuff, and get paid a living wage for it, maybe even right here in this country, don't shop WalMart, though.
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