As I mentioned in my last blog post, my video card died which got me thinking that it's time to upgrade the old PC.

So I did a little research and I think I've figured out what I want/need to put together a rig that preforms impressively but isn't ridiculously expensive. "impressively" and "ridiculously" are, of course, subjective terms. This is what I can up with for about a grand:

* CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - 2.40GHz
* GPU: GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB
* 4 GB PC6400 RAM, a decent motherboard, and some cooling fans. Everything else required I have.

So I was thinking, do I drop a grand now and upgrade? There are only a very small list of PC games that I'm that interested in right now, and most of them are also availible on Xbox 360. Also, I have a little time off right now, but come January I'll be very busy with work until the summer. Very busy == not very much time to game. In the end, I just can't justify it right now. Instead, I'm putting the money aside until May/June and see what I can get then.

In the interm I needed some kind of video card. Despite the crappy reviews, I picked up a ATI HD 2600 Pro. Why the heck would I do that you say? Two reasons, it's cheap and it came in an AGP version. My current motherboard is AGP *sigh*. Needless to say my expectations for the card were not very high.

On a lark, I downloaded COD4 sp demo to see if it could run it. I was surprised how smooth it was! Granted, it was all at pretty low settings, but even the lowest settings look great! I'm very impressed.

EDIT: Since COD4 worked, I tryed the Crysis demo. Again, at lowest settings it still looks awesome.

Holy lack of updates Batman.

I picked up a PSP a few months ago. What a fun little device! I've already picked up a small mountain of games for it.

On the 360 side, I'm slowly working through a backlog of games. I'm currently playing COD3... when COD4 is what most people are playing. Oh well. I've got my eye on a few 360 games at the moment but I'll probably hold off for a while.

PC wise it's not so good news. My videocard bought the farm so I've been without a decent gaming rig for a while. I still haven't played PC GRAW2! Crysis looks increadable as well. I'll put some pennies aside to upgrade, but it's hard to justify a huge outlay of cash for just a couple of titles when I've got 360 and PSP games I still haven't played.

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