Walter87

I like it, but I've already broken a few key caps.

Personally to me, I don't care about having the latest and greatest, nor have the desire to push everything to max at 60fps, just as long as its playable at decent settings. When its time to upgrade I tend to go with a highest/higher end cards when possible to get better longevity though, I find I can stretch the higher end cards a little longer than the mid range cards. My first real system I bought, I decided to go with the 2900XT. I could have gone with the 2600 at the time, but within 1.5-2 years it would have been severely lacking in performance with modern games at the time. My next major upgrade and new system was with the 5870, which I still have to this day (works fine for the most part for 1080p).

You will get similar performance by switching from a 280x to a 770, so don't see the incentive for swapping cards (unless you find someone willing to pay more for the 280x because of the whole mining craze.) Maxwell cards are also going to be announced likely as early as June, so if anything its better to wait for the architectural changes that will deliver improvements over existing 700 series before making any decision.

I do believe steam has a condition in their EULA that you cannot sue or file a class action lawsuit over the company... This is something the tax payers should bring up to their local politicians to address in a new law that mandates free access to EULA's before purchasing any licensed software. I kinda wish we had better consumer rights like the EU.

Steam does go down sometimes for server maintenance. Tuesday evenings are typically when they schedule weekly maintenance (about 30 minutes downtime)

Its alright (no where near as good as Firefox or Chrome). Very useful for certain games when you need to look up info without alt-tabbing (games like Fallout would crash for me, so looking up quest details or rare weapons was helpful) But I find that the browser crashes easily and hangs the entire steam overlay sometimes when I have a few tabs open or watching a video on youtube. Often any source game I play seems to crash too when the browser does.

Steam regularly goes down for maintenance at 4pm Pacific time (7pm Eastern). Typical downtime is 10-30 minutes.

Still rocking the HD5870 Due for an upgrade soon, but with the huge markup (and extremely low stock) in AMD cards because of mining, I'm waiting for prices to drop (and by that time, may consider Maxwell instead)

Have you tried verifying the game integrity (cache) of those games. I've had issues before with CSGO ('failed to join server') always corrupting a file and all my issues were restored after verify cache integrity and restarting steam. The verification will scan your game files and only redownload and replace any corrupt or damaged files.

Its been on sale for $50 off a few times at Canada Computers already (once during the holidays and I believe just recently). There is no way to predict these savings. Just keep an eye out on each retailer for possible sales (generally weekend sales are your best bet).

My first console game was Super Mario 2 / Duck Hunt on NES First PC games : Original Duke Nukem and Battle Chess (I remember this game requiring 10 or so floppy's to install)

Your upgrade choices are LGA775 Core 2 Quad/Duo, though it may be difficult to find a reliable part (would have to search used parts from places like eBay). The Q9550 ranges from $150-200 on eBay. You could also go with a Core 2 Duo E6550/E6600/E6700 which go's for 50-150. Not really sure if its worth upgrading to be honest, as you will have to find a used part somewhere (something I personally skeptical about unless you buy from a trusted seller). Maybe look into getting a small 60GB SSD instead? That motherboard would support an SSD, although it would only be using a SATA2 connector (3Gb/s). That is still faster than a traditional HDD.

Actually I think you actually could build a more powerful WorkStation than the new Mac Pro (Tek Syndicate had a video on it here). The issue is, most companies or design studios probably don't have the expertise to know the components, or build them themselves so choose whats most convenient for them (often pre-built Mac systems).

I believe there was potential Insider trading with the EA case though, where several executives or upper-management bought stock before the BF4 release data and sold it before they had their press release / quarterly earnings report for the quarter to announce the future expansions were on hold to focus on fixing the games problems. Investors should know the risk of stocks and investments and shouldn't be capable of filing a class action lawsuit if they lost a bit of money. There have been many cases like this particular one where investors lost a bit of money and attempt to sue to get their money back.

Steam never lets you get free games to keep. They offer these free weekends to let people try out the game and buy it on discount if they like it (since they have a no return policy.)