I personally have the Antec 300 Illusion, and it is about the same price as the HAF 912. It's not as big, but it comes with more fans, which means better cooling. I really like it.

I have a 4670, and I get much better than low-medium at 1280x960. It isn't powerful by today's standards at all, but is significantly better than most onboard graphics.

They seem to work just fine, but by the time the money comes, you're left wondering "what is this for, again?"

The Core i3 2100 is actually pretty good for gaming (bench here). Just remember that it is only a dual core, so if you play games that take advantage of quad (like RTS games, some others), it may not be as good as some others. You could always upgrade to a quad core sandy bridge later, if one isn't in your budget now. Or you could save up another $100 to get an i5.

It's interesting to look at how things moved with the next generation. The 5870 is really good, while the 6970 isn't great. But the 5670 isn't very good, while the 6670 is awesome. Just an interesting note.

I liked the more open world feel of Mario 64. Galaxy 1 and 2 were fun, but didn't really feel like there was much to explore. However, I would probably buy and play either one. I would like something new, but I don't know where they would go.

This really looks like it could be the ultimate average user home computer or laptop though. Both my brother and dad play some games, and this creams the computers they use, and is pretty cheap. A computer with this chip in it at a big box store will make most average users very happy. I think that is what AMD is going for.

Thanks for your help. The contrast ratio is one of the reasons I've held on to this CRT for so long. Viewing angles and inaccurate colors too. LCDs almost seem like a step backward to me. Sure they are smaller, take fewer materials, use less energy, but they just seem inferior to me. At least they are better than they were. Thanks again.

I think I would rather have black bars than stretching. Being able to force a monitor to display a 4:3 ratio instead of 16:9 or 10 would at least limit some of the distortion caused by the stretching. I'm mostly just curious if many monitors are doing that now, or if most of them stretch. Is there a way to tell? Does anybody here have one that lets you control the aspect ratio? Is it possible to do it through a program or drivers?

Thanks for the suggestion. That would save me money. I also like 16:10 better than 16:9. I was just curious about this monitor (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236052) because it claims "aspect control" as one of it's features, but I'm not sure what that is. I have a laptop that will only use 1024x768 pixels on the screen if I choose that resolution (which isn't native for the screen) and I was hoping some of the newer desktop monitors would do the same thing. Are there any?