The CCC is useless, get rid of it and use ATI Tray Tools instead. More powerful and far less bloatware..

Necessary steps to changeover:

1. Go to ATi site and download the applicable DRIVERS ONLY package

2. Google ATI Tray Tools and download the latest version

3. Uninstall CCC

4. Install the drivers you downloaded

5. Install ATI Tray Tools

6. Select an ATI Tray tools profile (Performance, Quality or Balanced)

8. Go into the ATT settings and select Vsync always on

Done.

...it's nigh on impossible to make a thread about getting a PC in these forums without at least three people telling you (often with multiple spelling and grammar errors) that you should build your own and that you're stupid if you can't.RayvinAzn

Not to mention that they will also tell you they can do it for half the price and with better components... These are also the same ppl posting in one thread that their machine is no longer booting after frying it trying to overclockand in another thread offering used components that "have never been overclocked at all and are being sold due to upgrade"... ;)

Just as a side note, but why did you use a Q6600 instead of a dual core E8400, for example?

Off the top of my head I can only think of like two games that take advantge of Quad Core. You could've shaved off a few bucks and would've got better performance.KleptoZ

Price difference to the quad was small and several games I am playing atm use all 4 cores, and as noted future games will use more. I also use my machine for video encoding and some work related number crunching, for which the extra cores are great.

CPU speed is really not that much of an issue atm anyways. None of the current games I am playing (CoD4, Mass Effect, rFactor etc) get the CPU load above 40% so there is no bottleneck in the CPU at all for me, extra CPU speed would just be wasted. It seems that GPU is more important atm.

Did you got 2 8800gt?

Also when did you ordered those parts from?

Im sure you can build the same for cheaper now.wklzip

Single 8800GT. I bought them a week or so ago from a local (Perth) store which worked out better than buying online and paying for postage and credit card surcharges. If I was in NSW I would have gone to MSY and got it cheaper but Perth is limited in supply options...

Your motherboard is not capable of SLI, it's capable of Crossfire. I hope you didn't pick up the 8800GT over the HD4850 because you thought the board was SLI-capable...

And I don't care what kind of onboard audio you have, a decent dedicated sound card will always sound better on a decent sound system.

It's good information, but kind of out of place in this forum where all the regulars build their own (or are fully capable of doing so).

RayvinAzn

You are right, crossfire not SLi but I am not planning to use either with only a single card. I use a dedicated SB Audigy card which does the job nicely for my headphones but I was trying to keep my post simple and positive. My intent was to try and encourage non-pc building types to consider the benefit of building as opposed to buying.

As per my other post, I just built a machine last week with these components totalling $850:

Intel Q6600 Quad core CPU

Gigabyte EP-45-DS3R motherboard (which is capable of SLi)

4GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 RAM

XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vid card (this is the bottleneck of the system...)

Corsair 620W modular power supply

Add a HDD, G15 keyboard, G5 mouse and the case of your choice and you are good to go for around $1400...

Hi all,

Just wanted to share my PC building experience. It seems that a lot of people are convinced that they need to spend huge dollars to get a decent gaming rig. I recently upgraded my PC for just over $800 and thought I'd detail it for you. I reused my keyboard, HDD, monitor, mouse and case (which had sufficient cooling), and my existing WindowsXP license.

My new components are:

Intel Q6600 Quad core CPU

Gigabyte EP-45-DS3R motherboard (which is capable of crossfire)

4GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 RAM

XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vid card

Corsair 620W modular power supply

The new motherboards and hardware are an absolute breeze to setup. If you haven't built a PC before, now is the best time as there are loads of how-to guides on the net and it's the best way to get a great machine at a bargain price.

This rig will run CoD4 on 1280x1024 (my monitor max res) at full quality settings at a steady 75 fps (which is my monitor max refresh). Not to mention ArmA with max draw distance and Mass Effect at max settings. rFactor and LFS on absolute max settings don;t even make the machine blink. All of these games only load the CPU to about 40% max so the number crunching power of this machine is fantastic. As the motherboard has dual onboard LAN and onboard 8 channel sound you don't need any additional cards aside from the vid card so it's a nice clean install.

If you really want to push the performance up higher spending a little more on a better graphics card would do the job but it's not really necessary unless you need huge resolutions...

Anyways, I hope the info is interesting to some.

The difficulty and unrealistic damage (20+ bullets/enemy) didn't help either.OAKside24

The easiest way to make a the game a LOT more playable is to edit the dispersion settings for the weapons. Open the weapon config script files and halve the dispersion settings on the rifles. That's it, no need to do anything else. After that all of the characters in game have more accurate weapons which make the fire fights much more realistic. No more 20 shot sniper kills with a scoped rifle. You can shoot more accurately, but so can they...