Razorback

I would think ebay. Yeah I love the 4800 series. I had a 4850 w/ waterblock and ramsinks, did 725/2300 on stock volts, then UPS killed it when i sent it to a buddy for a voltmod, so atleast I got it warrantied by UPS -- now have 4870 w/ full coverage waterblock, does 825/4100 also stock volts. Will voltmod the next card I pick up. The 4800s will do 880+ w/ a voltmod on water.

I was still in college at the time working as a grunt operating heavy equipment in a warehouse. We had a radio at the truck we were unloading and I heard it on that then we went up to the break room to see it on TV.

At 4.2GHz without multithreaded apps, I would say definitely. Sounds like you got a monster overclocker, and most Wolfdale's overclock well, but not THAT well. Most need a lot of volts to go over 4GHz which usually needs massive cooling to maintain stability so definitely hang on to that chip for a while. I bet if you threw a waterblock on there and added 2-3 tenths more voltage you'd hit 5GHz. Congrats on the massive o/c. On Edit: I'm thinking you got yours used as the egg has the e8400 for $170 which is about the price of the 9850 Phenom ($174). I'd probably take a quad over a dual for the same price, you know what I mean? But if you can grab a Wolfdale for $80, go for it.

I personally think the 4800 series is way better for the money than the current Nvidia offerings, but he should probably stick to Nvidia cards since he has an SLI mainboard.

I have the same cpu -- and don't listen to the Intel fanboy crap. Yes, Intel is currently on top, but that doesn't make the AMD cpu a bad processor. It's all in bang for your buck, and the 9850 and now 9950 are pretty good bang for your buck cpus. My 9850 is in my gaming rig and runs everything flawless, including Crysis on Very High in 1600x1200. Have you overclocked the cpu yet? The 9850 is a decent overclocker. Mine does 2.94 stable on water with a minor voltage bump. Most people using the stock cooler and stock volts can get to 2.7-2.8 without issue. As far as the vid card, if you don't want to spend a TON a good combo would be to find a pair of 8800 GTXs on ebay or something (or buy 1, then another later as many are coming out for sale now that people are upgrading). I just sold mine for $170 and it still worked good (ran Crysis in 1600x1200 with everything on High), my 4870 just works better. If you don't want to go used, pick up a 9800 GTX+ and then wait to pick up a second. I have felt the 9800 GX2 was just a bad bang for your buck buy altogether since its release. Hope this helps some.

You guys seen the new Challenger cruising around yet? G/F and I were out in the Vette last weekend and pulling through a parking lot we saw some dude getting out of a brand new black one. It looked old school and very sweet. I stopped and told him sweet ride. Hope you guys see it soon if you haven't.

Taken out. If you factor in annual tax returns, it'll be somewhere around ~25%.

29.6% here.

haha couldn't agree more.

In this case yes. I suppose they could amend the law to account for # of teeth, age, and weight, but then the legislators would probably be taken to court for discrimination and have the law ruled unconstitutional. The best thing is to just follow the law no matter what and you'll generally be pretty safe in terms of being sued.

Sounds like you handled as best you could.

HP definitely sucks -- I have to deploy them here in the office on a regular basis. I also agree Vista sucks. AMD cpus however, do not suck. They are very good price/performance processors. Intel definitely is the winner currently w/ the performance crown, but AMD has some good cpus out there. All that being said, I also vote for build your own. Newegg is great and usually has some pretty good deals going. You could build a nice rig for ~$500. Add $200-300 for a solid gaming vid card and you'd have a decent gaming rig as well.

No offense to you, I'm sure your dog is harmless and all, but truthfully all dogs should be on leashes. That is one law that exists for a good reason. You never know what they will do, especially considering it's true that most people are afraid of dogs and as someone above stated, a lot of people aren't very smart when it comes to dogs and tend to do things that unintentionally "excite" them when they may only be acting in a playful manner.

Thought you all would find this a good read. I always enjoy the fact check institutions pointing out what frauds politicians are -- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_fact_check This one also shows a good checkup on the tax plans -- I was actually surprised that Obama's was overall pretty close to the claim as I always thought someone would disprove it as overly exaggerated at some point, but he was a lot more accurate than I thought he would be. http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/04/news/economy/obama_claim_p1/index.htm?postversion=2008090409

While I agree 100% w/ your statement above, didn't you just start a thread about how you're 100% behind his brother McCain?

I've watched a lot from both camps. I'm a registered Republican. The bottom line I've come to, and everyone here I'm sure has already formed his or her opinions and will rightfully continue to do so, but it seems to me, if you're pretty darn rich, it will be in your benefit to vote for McCain. If you're an average citizen, making under $250k per year and a solid middle-class member, it will be in your interests to vote for Obama -- this is entirely looking at their tax policies. As far as foreign policy I'm of the belief that sound judgment is better than military experience. After doing a lot of reading, and listening to these candidates answer a host of questioning over the past months, I've come to the conclusion that Obama has far better judgment than McCain. McCain has far more experience, but like Bush, who had been a governor and had a good deal of executive experience, I feel he has flawed judgment. Again, I'm a registered Republican, and I'll be voting for Obama come November.

lol what punishment? The criminals have more rights than honest citizens in this country.

You know, I gave Vista an honest shake. I bought the SP1 Home Premium and tried it out. I had no problems with 2D apps like surfing the internet, Office, etc., but when I tried 3D games it wouldn't last more than 2-5 minutes before locking up and crashing -- I tried Halo, Halo 2, and Crysis and all were unstable. I formatted, went back to XP SP2, and rock solid stable again. Sticking w/ XP for now.

Might be worth checking out on TV sometime. I don't spend money on anything w/ Jack Black in it. Don't have anything against Stiller though. Thanks for the review -- you're one of the first people to post anything good about it that I've seen so far.

As soon as it hits Paypal I transfer it out to my bank account. I usually wait a day or two to see it show up in my main bank account for shipping.

Foxconn 8800 GTX Overclocking Version - Retail Stock clocks: 630MHz core/1350MHz shader/2000MHz memory I've installed the Zalman VF1000 cooler on it along w/ the matching Zalman ramsink kit for memory, i/o chip and voltage regulators. Great card. I've recently upgraded to a pair of ATI cards since my board only supports Crossfire. Pics: http://home.columbus.rr.com/razor/Vid%20Card/Picture%20003%20(Large).jpg http://home.columbus.rr.com/razor/Vid%20Card/Picture%20004%20(Large).jpg http://home.columbus.rr.com/razor/Vid%20Card/Picture%20005%20(Large).jpg PM if interested. $175

I also have TW -- will be switching to WOW next month before football season starts. I tried to switch to satellite last year, but they determined we had too many trees in our area and they couldn't get proper line of sight.

The crazy thing that I saw a story on recently was that since people are driving less, now they're talking about having to raise taxes to pay for road maintenance since part of the gas tax goes toward road/bridge upkeep....what do you guys think?

They don't have me fooled. At 3.60 they're still about 1.60 too high and that's what I think everytime I drive by a gas station.

I burn most things to DVD -- 4.5GB of space -- You shouldn't need too many.