Alrighty, here are the spec's of my Dell that I've had together since the start of college:
Mobo - Intel P965 (Dell proprietary bullshit)
CPU - C2D E6600
RAM - 2GB G.Skill HK
GPU - EVGA 8800GTS 320MB
PSU - Corsair HX520
HDD's - 1x WD Caviar 250GB, 1x WD Caviar 500GB
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I'm considering:
1) New GPU. This is complicated for me as I haven't been following either Nvidia nor ATi for at least a year. I know of both the GTX and 4-series, but I don't know where the best value is in either lineup. GTX275 looks good but might just be a bit more than I'm looking for. GTX260 perhaps? $160 is very attractive. Both 4890 and 4870 looked interesting on the red side of things as well.
My main use is for Oblivion, which getting a little dated but with my texture mod's has always given my GTS a lot of trouble because of lacking memory. Resolution will be 1680 x 1050 on a 20" wide. No second monitor for now. No need for SLI or XFire, not possible with my board.
Also, I bought my HX520 when they were just released, so I never received an 8 pin (6+2) cable for my GPU. Will Corsair still be willing to send me one or two even after a year and a half? If not, where should I look for one?
Lastly, I am getting to the point where the E6600 is going to greatly bottleneck me with the GPU? It never seemed to hold back the GTS much, but GPU's just keep getting better and better and have outpaced CPU's by a large margin.
2) Additional HDD's.
Probably gonna go with WD Caviar Black 750GB's or 1TB's. If you've got suggestions that go beyond brand loyalty I'd appreciate it. I will say that WD has worked for me 100% thus far.
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Thanks for any/all help .