thanks for the cable management feedback...now I'm going to spend hours staring at beer ratings....while drinking a Double Bock.

I'm hard pressed to recommend any 5xxx series. Both FX5200 and Radeon 9550 are in the $50 range....but, if you are willing to pay $100, I'd suggest a 7600GS...supports newer shader models, some moderate horsepower for games.

Nice build! I like the velcro dots for fan mounting.

A couple of questions:

How was the Pale Ale?

I've heard that the audio connection on the P5B mobo is stuffed in the corner. Any trouble with cabling? Any other mobo quirkiness? (I've been leaning toward the P5B-E for my next build).

Don't worry about losing IDE support on a newer mobo...you can always get a PCI based IDE controller card for $10-20 with RAID support.

Not to derail the thread, but here's a q for you 939 overclockers...at what point does AGP become the bottleneck for gaming performance?

Congrats on the partnership. The Solo build looks sweet - close to my paper design.

AMD is expected to start shipping 65nm product in the next week or two. So, the next wave of lower power and prices is upon us.

How much system RAM is Vista consuming? A quick look at a friend's laptop after booting showed about 700-800MB of physical memory used. Is this typical?

For my 2800+ Barton setup, 3DMark2006 shows a big improvement when you move from a 9600XT to a 7600GS in 3D gaming. Without knowing what CPU/RAM you have, it's hard to predict what frame rate you'll get..but, probably in the 30-45 range. To compare, a 4600+ based system with 7900GS x2 in SLI gets 60...

As someone else that lives in California, please invade. Then take over some nice island country in the Caribbean so we have a place to visit.

Try these forums - they may have more experience with the drive.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/
http://club.cdfreaks.com/

run 3dMark and then you can do a direct comparison

How would you use it? Is it for gaming or other hvy 3D use?
Compare your current system with the new(er) card.

$400 is tough for a gaming build. The suggestions by jackylman get you a mobo that you can grow with over time (AM2 and PCI-E). I have an Athlon 2800, AGP based 7600GS, and 1GB of dual channel DRAM, and while it'll play the games well at moderate graphics quality, it won't play them at decent frames...

From EE Times:

"The GTX8800 adapter card provides twice the performance of NVidia's current graphics adapter. It consumes 145W maximum and 116W on average...."

press release and docs

Mfgrs must implement by Jul 07 to keep Energy Star mark.

I was just reading that as well. At some point, AGP 8x is going to be the bottleneck...but, it's good to see new platforms.

Article at X-bit Labs

I'm at that same point - spend a lot of $'s for a new mobo/ram/pci-e vid card or just do another incremental upgrade to my Barton 2800+. Futuremark's search and compare tool is a way for you to type in what you've got and then play what-if games with the processor and graphics card. At first glance,...

I've noticed that the load is much quieter now

or get rid of the rubber feet and always place it on a thick hunk of metal. lower case temp might lower fan rpm. Then again - metal to metal vibration might make it worse.

50C idle/70C gaming with 35C mobo temp.

limited by my agp mobo, $'s, and the wish to have a warranteed passive card, my options were few:-)

Vicotnik wrote:CA_Steve: Try removing the PCI cover plate just under the card. Usually that help creating a little airflow around the heatsink.

Actually, I'm pretty pleased with 70C passive temps while gaming.

I've been having problems with my 6600GT, so I installed a 7600GS on my AGP based mobo with 2800+ Barton. 3D2006 score goes from 1500-1800 to 2100+. 10-20% improvement - about what was seen on Anandtech. Not a monster performer, but good enough until I can afford to build a new system. This new Giga...

Some comments from another WoW player. With a Barton 2800, 1GB of dual channel memory and a 6600GT vid card, alt-tabbing can also be slow for me. - WoW has a memory leak when you are alt-tabbed out of the game. It's better than it was, BUT, if you alt-tab a bunch of times, the game becomes an idle m...

kpig.com

with prices finally dropping in Jan

If "serious" shipments start in October, I'd expect it to be available to the general riff-raff like us around November.

nice. only downside is possible clearance issues now.