Depends on the game:

FPS: usually play until I beat it, then I go back and play though again using cheats, typically I'm done with an FPS within 2 weeks

RTS: play until I beat the campaign, then I play though again and cheat like crazy, not interested in online play. So typically depending on how involved the campaign is I will usually be done with an RTS within 1 month (The one exception to this was Rome:Total War which I play for 3 months)

RPG: these can be real time killers for me. Oblivion I played for upwards of 5 months. If it is a fun RPG I will play it through and try to do every quest available. If it is an A+ game I will play it for years (in fact I still play all the old infinity engine games like BG II and IWD)

MMORPG: If it's well done I can play it for years, I played DAOC for 4 years, however I don't play these things as much now because I realized how these games can become a "job". I'm playing LOTRO right now but my play time is limited to about 2 nights a week. (I've only gotten my char to level 3 so far in pre-order beta)

Sports: I used to play a season through of EA NHL every year but the last 3 years the series just hasn't appealed to me, when they make a decent NHL game again I'll play it.

So I guess the best "bang for the buck" for me are RPG's.

Mythic has a sorta ok track record, WH will probably be a decent game.

Turbine has a horrible track record thus far, however I have to admit LOTRO is fun to play. It's not the type of game you can play for say more than a year.

Funcom, well lets just say I'm still waiting for my refund on Anarchy Online and I won't touch anything with "Funcom" on it.

Hrmmm how to explain it?

If you have the PSU I think you do it has 2 12v rails. The cord that you use to plug into the 1900xtx. Follow it back towards the PSU and you will see that at some point along the line it will be bundled or it will in some way be connected to other power leads. The entire bundle is one of your 12v rails. What you need to do is isolate the cord powering your 1900 as much as possible. So use the other rail to plug in your HD and DVD etc etc. You want the video card on it's own rail so that it's not sharing power with anything else. Hopefully you follow what I'm saying, it's hard to explain it.

This might not even be the problem because it is odd that you can still boot up but your whole system is slow. Most of the time if the card isn't getting enough power it will cause random reboots or blue screens/lock-ups.

It sounds to me like a classic case of memory corruption.

Google your motherboard and overclocking guide. They usually include pics of how to overclock your ram. You're not trying to o/c your ram but at least you would see how to change the timings on your ram.

If you have the sticks I think you do I would bet that your bios is auto setting your ram to 1.8v and 5-5-5-18 timings. Your ram is supposed to run and is tested at 1.9v 5-5-5-12, many people with problems have reported that setting the rated timings fixes their problems. You have to manually change these timings in the bios though. Make absolutely sure you know what you are doing though before you attempt to change voltages in the bios.

If you have the patience to be on hold for a long time you could call Corsair support and explain that your board works with only 1 stick in but not with both. They will walk you through what to do and determine whether its the ram or the MB.

Ok check the following now:

1. Are you using a seperate rail from the PSU to power the ATI card?

2. Which model of "Antec True Power 550" do you have? I looked them up and the top of the line trio one is pretty good but the bottom of the line one only has 30 amps on the 12v. If you are not sure then just pop your case and read the sticker on your PSU. Look for the +12v numbers that will look something like this "+12V1@18A, +12V2@18A.......etc etc". If you have the trio version of the antec 550 it will have 3 12v lines at 18 amps which is well more than you need for your system and a 1900xtx. If you have the 30 amp version that may be your problem. I'm not familiar with how many amps ATI recommends but I bet it is close to 30 amps on the 12v.

Before you do anything else check the following.

Go to the Corsair site and look up the specs on the exact ram you have. Corsair has several different PC26400 sticks otherwise I would have looked it up for you. Write down the rated timings and voltage on your ram.

Put both sticks in your board and go into your bios.

I bet that your motherboard is defaulting to 1.8v and really crappy timings on your ram. There is a reason for this and I'm not going to explain it here. Lets just say that it's suppose to do this and Corsair and every other ram maker has done a terrible job of explaining EPP to the end user.

Manually set the timings and voltage that you wrote down. Reboot and see what happens. I suspect this may be your problem. If this doesn't fix it then your next course of action is to email or call Corsair support. I would assume you have bad ram before you have a bad memory controller on the MB. 

Really it could be anything but this is probably a good place to start.

Take all the ram out of your computer except for 1 stick in the first slot. If that doesn't work then try a different stick (I'm assuming that you have at least 2 sticks in your board).

If that still doesn't work then borrow a stick of ram from a friend and try it on your board.

As I said you problem could be anywhere in your system, in most of the cases that I have seen though with what you are describing I would say that at least 80% of the time it is the ram. The problem is that you seem to be able to boot up and post but as soon as you start to install windows you have errors. That tells me that there is a very high chance you are having memory corruption.

[QUOTE="therealFrek"]Blows my aging A8N-E system out of the water. Here's my compare http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=200041

Reason I was interested in your score is because I'm building a new system on Wednesday that is sorta similiar to yours, but I went with the asus hybrid board and I'm just curious how it's gonna compare in the CPU tests against the 965 board. The video tests won't be a fair comparison though as I'm going with 8800 GTS's in SLI.
Ebougile

I don't intend this to sound insulting or anything, but a dual core Athlon 64 system with an A8N-E and a 7900GT video cards is not something that I would call aging. Man, I ran a P4 2.8GHz system with a 9800 Pro video card for over three years as a gaming rig until just a few months ago when I had a new system built.

I see your point and I probably should have chose a better word than "aging". To me though it just isn't cutting it with what I play. In Oblivion with all the mods I run this system can't handle it. Supreme Commander is brought to an absolute crawl unless I turn down all the options. I like to play games on max settings hence why I'm upgrading. The system I have now is capable of playing everything on the market but not at high setttings. What can I say, I'm an upgrade junkie and I end up buying at least a few parts every 6 months. 

Run CPU-Z and click on the "Mainboard" tab.

In the Chipset fields I bet it says "Intel" then in the next box I bet it says "945P"