i've always wanted to see IW develop a squad based sci-fi shooter personally.

People do it. You're just really limited due to the lack of cooling, and if you don't know what you're doing you definitely can screw up your card.

I have the ATI equivalent to the 8600m gt, it's a good budget card for notebooks.

how amazing would it be if this were true...

who cares about good graphics, as long as the gameplay is solid.

LCD's are easier on the eyes

to the op, Samsung LCD's are beautiful.. they also get rave reviews.

like said above, are you overclocking?

just a huge speculation, but it could be artifacts.

ASUS is a quality company, they're mainly known and praised for their motherboards.

My gaming pc's motherboard is ASUS, and I own an ASUS laptop. Both great products, however I have no experience with their video cards.

Like said before, you could do a lot worse.

Might be wise to go with Ubuntu

it's the most newbie friendly distro out there, just download the live cd .iso, burn it to a CD, and install it to a seperate partition or hdd. There are guides out there I suggest you read up on also.