Blogs So, I built my new gaming machine last night

Very tidy rig, loving your cable management skills!

I see you had the same issue I had with the gtx 280 and the P182's upper drive cage

 

It was time for my yearly XP re-install last week, and I decided to give Win7 Beta (x64) a go. I had decided to give Vista a miss, but I was curious and thought I could just install XP if I didn't like it.

So far my experience has been positive. I haven't used Vista so I have no basis for that comparison, but I agree with what you and others have said about Win7. Gaming has been smooth, I haven't noticed lower frame rates compared to XP, but I've only been playing DX9 games for the past week.

The only issue I've had is with my AVG anti-virus. Every time I boot I get an Action Centre warning to turn AVG on, I do this, but AVG never turns on. I can live with this for a while until I have time to research a fix.

MAJOR GRIPE ALERT! What the hell has happened to the UP tree button in folders?? I never knew how much I used it until it was gone! Alt-Up is just no substitute for a handy button in the save-file dialogue box.

 

can't you just click on the folder name before your current folder name??

i do miss the UP button, but the folder names are good enough once you get used to it.

 

Backspace?

 

You can do both of these if you are browsing folders, but it is missing from the save/load-file dialogue box, where I use it most.
If you need to access a folder OTHER than the one you just saved to/loaded from, you have to either use Alt-Up or take the long path from the drive root (in my case, my storage D.
I can't seem to find any options regarding this, and from looking around other's comments this seems a "feature" new to Vista. As I've never used Vista this was an unpleasant surprise.

 

adnoc- in the save dialog.. it works like the explorer- same way.. in the bar you'll see > Computer > Local Disk (C > Temp ... depending on the folder your in

Click on the > right before the current directory to see a listing above or click on Local Disk (C for example to go there.. it took some time to adjust for me too when I switched from xp

 

I am running a system similar to what yours was before upgrades and what you've done is exactly what I am saving up to do with mine. I am def. in the need for a new video card, and I need to up from 2 to 4 gigs of RAM as well.

Quick question: the GTX 260 is a pretty slick card and cheaper then the GTX 280 but performs similarly. Why'd you chose the 280 over the 260?

 

There were a few deals going around on the 280s and I snapped one up when I could - we mentioned the good deals in our January buyer's guide.

 

that OCuk £218 deal?? which brand did you get?

 

^it was BFGTech

 

hi nice rig I was wondering how Windows 7 works for you on a day-to-day basis? Can it take the same programs as Vista? I am thinking not just games, but Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Premiere, Warcraft 3....

I am considering giving this a try now as i will probably buy a upgrade anyway.

 

WC3 - works perfectly fine
PS - CS4 works perfectly fine

Don't know about Premiere or Maya but Sony Acid 6, Vegas 8 run without any problems although 7 said during the Acid install that the MS SQL Server Desktop Engine is known to have issues with this OS.

 

thanks!

 

I've got Photoshop and Premiere Elements running on my Win7 machine and they work fine.