^^^ yep i dont try to keep up with new hardware, that is just silly but when i do upgrade, usually yearly, i like to go all out just for that satisfaction and i also find there is little more satisfying in that respect than plonking the new bits and and overclocking the stink out of them
Well if your speakers are no too good for higher volumes, you could always hook ur pc up to your stereo if it has the AUX ports at the back, i can set it to almost full bast with no distorting.
Yeah, that's what an HTPC is for . Still would like to fill my office with sound without hassling with the entertainment room, however. Meh...
seems like i am going in a complete other direction. my comp is a p3 500Hz with 256 ram and thats all i need in the moment to do what i need to do(email,reading). i am not a gaming person and if i want i still got my ps2 to play. got the rig for so long i dont remember how long and all i did was upgrading hdd. ok i am getting my self a htpc now for looking movies but for everything els he dos the job. not seeing the point in upgrading the whole time becouse i spend my money better on vinyl then on hardware. but thats just me i think.
Contradictory, to my earlier post, I've just pur-chased AMD Athlon 64+ 3200, 1GB DDR 400, DFI LP-UT NF3 250Gb.
im happy with my mid range system its coming to like 3 1/2 years old but i like it, it does what i need. sure its starting to show its wear and tear just had to replace the cpu fan and hs and the northbridge fan needs fixing etc. but it does its job. ive got a philips 19" crt monitor its absolutely superb, i wouldnt swap it for a tft or lcd (well not yet anyway when they can match this quality then maybe)
My recent chain of thought has followed the lines mentioned above as well; if your hardware has the power to do what you want it to do, whats the point in upgrading it, and why not improve the computing experience? My 3000+, 512 megs of RAM and 9800 pro still run every game I have perfectly, and I am sure it will run any game I get within the next year or so without a hitch. I invested in a nice 19" Viewsonic CRT monitor so that I could better enjoy the power, and I am very happy with that decision. Its bright, its sharp, and gives a pleasent picture. All that there is left for me to do is work on quieting my box down. I think the last two years of mad computer hardware pressing has worn down on us, and the majority are coming to realize that we simply dont need this stuff yet. Im completely in tune with this topic. Now, to silence that noise maker box of mine...
Mines getting a bit long in the tooth now and I've managed to kill the onboard LAN with a home made xover cable , so an upgrade is in order, only be a new motherboard, case and 17inch tft (ilyama CRT is doing weird things with lines and the hideous 4 yr old beige box has to go) though, the fx5200 does me fine as do the rest of the bits and bobs in it, Sod buying a 64bit chip or a gt6800 at the moment i'll wait a yr or so till the prices are a bit more realistic for my pocket
Forget the analog inputs, 5.1 optical rocks my world Am I the only one who has a stereo that serves as a stereo for his comptuer and his computer only?
I just can't justify spending large amounts of money on an upgrade. Over the years my pc is a frankenpc with only small components getting replaced once in a while. Lets look at the progression I bought a AMD K6-2 400 in 1998 I then replaced it with a PII 400 (I stole the dvd drive and the hdd out of the k6-2) (bought a new cheap case here) I used a ati rage pro card for a while until I could afford a geforce DDR I got a little more money and got a pIII 700 (overclocked to a ghz) and some decent ram and a new mobo (all of the other components stayed with it) Around this time I got my 19in Sony Trinitron CRT (this thing is a beast and its the best CRT I've ever had) I finally made the big upgrade and got a athlon 1.4 and ddr ram and a cd-burner (same case, dvd drive) months later I upgraded my hdds to add SCSI 10k (which I still use today) I sold the 1.4 and mobo so I bought a xp2000 and a new mobo Months later I bought a geforce 3 A few months after that I bought a swanky lian-li case This system I had until last sept when I smoked the board so I upgraded to a xp3000 and a radeon 9800 pro yesterday I got a dvd burner (NEC 3520) I've used the same optical mouse since they were introduced and I've had that monitor for almost 5 years. Those are the two things I couldn't live without... the rest of it was all to decrease load times. I barely notice fps increases in games but I do notice load times (which is where fast hdds and cpus help) of course, aside from the original geforce all of these upgrades were older products that had at least 2 newer products ahead of them (yep, parts from the pc bargain bin)
