RailfanS

Awesome contest Linus, thanks for finally doing a giveaway that doesn't require a Twitter or Facebook account. If I won this contest I would give my 8120 and its' MB to my little brother who really wants to get into PC gaming, but doesn't have any spare cash right now. His Toshiba Laptop just isn't doing it lol

Here's mine, I finally got around to downloading 4.0 today. The presets feature definitely makes comparisons like this easier.

it starts at midnight eastern or 9pm pacific Here's the link: www.twitch.tv/linustech/new

I have had the same issue with my 7870 ever since I bought it. Although I haven't had a crashes yet on the 13.2 drivers. It's a great card when it works...

I know it's a little over $100 but I've had good luck with this Biostar board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138341 I've been running it for about 10 months now with my 8120 at 4.1Ghz, it's completely stable. This is a 990 board, they also make a 970 that comes in a exactly $100 that might be worth checking out.

I don't even need HL1 to play Black Mesa? Since it's a HD Remake, will I still get the amazing experience that every talks about? You don't need half life 1 to play black mesa. It was developed by an independent group of programmers (not Valve) using the HL2 game engine, which is called Source.

What genres interest you? If you're into FPS I would recommend you download and play Black Mesa. It's a mod based on the Source engine, so you need a Source game (Portal, HL2, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, ect) in order to play it but it's free to download. It's pretty much a remake of the original Half Life with modern graphics. http://www.blackmesasource.com/

I would look at something like a 7770 or a 650. Both of those are around 100 USD and only require 1 6 pin power connector. The only thing with those cards is that a 400w power supply is the minimum recommended, which could be an issue if the power supply in your PC is low quality (I really don't know anything about Shuttle PC's). example 650: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130827 example 7770: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202011

like Chris said, you've got quiet a bit going on in that picture. The first thing you need to do is eliminate unnecessarily programs that are running in the background. If you still want to add ram to your machine after doing that, we're going to need some more information. System specs, and what OS you are running (appears to be XP?) will be helpful for making a recommendation.

I don't think there's a motherboard that supports 4 way cfx with triple slot cards... The Asus Matrix 7970 is an awesome card, but most 4 way MB's are set up for 4 double slot cards. I don't think putting a water block on is going to change that either, unless you dremel the outer slot off of each of the cards after installing the block.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the CPU's due now that they're actually shrinking the process. I'm going to wait to see the benchmarks before I get to excited though.

After shutting my second monitor off and taking an average of 5 runs my result was: Cat: 8946 Specs are in the signature.

yeah, there's a couple of paid versions but I don't know if they're out yet. The free version I downloaded is actually an open beta. Here's the link http://www.allbenchmark.com/download

I would like to build myself a 4p system someday as well. Unfortunately do to my housing/ financial situation it's out of the question right now... It would be an awesome to build a rig with quad Opterons :)

I think it's just for the modular architecture of the bulldozer and piledriver cpu's. Phenom chips use a more traditional architecture, so windows is already optimized for it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this one.