I've been thinking of upgrading my box for a while. It was built in 2003 and it serves me quite well, except for the noise problem i had to replace the case fans.

By looking at your discussions here, it appears 8800 GTX is the fastest engine around, followed by 8800GTS 8600GT, etc. However, it would be an insult if my new box's noise level is worse than what i have after putting it together. Can you recommend one its performance is above average while its noise level is very good? I was looking at MSI NX8600 fanless, dont know how well it performs.

The video card must come with dual LCD output, support HD, most of the 2D, maybe 3D.

any input would be appreciated.

thanks.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/grap [...] &chart=313

Compare one against another & see if it's worth the extra cost. Only you can tell if it is worth it.

BTW, ULTRA is the fastest right now.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html

I'd suggest at least 8500 for high def. There are quite a lot of choices at newegg. Some of them are passively cooled - fanless.

What is your Budget?
What do you want to do with the system?

You could get a Water Cooler for you 8800GTX and make it quite silent.
However, you are talking big bucks for the 8800GTX and even more for the wateer cooling.

X1950 pro with thermalright HR-03 passive cooler. that'll be silent, cheap, and none-too-shabby in the performance dept... and comes in AGP form, as your box was built in 2003, I doubt it'll be able to un the 8800 series, as they're PCI-E

I haven't spent much time to think about the budget. If the box lasts for a few years like the one I have, I dont think it becomes an issue.

Water cooling defintely is the most "extreme" solution out there. However, is it easy enough to implement, and is it cold enough to make 8800GTX cool enough? I am open to all options.

What I plan to use the upgrade include (dont laugh!):

1. run a very IO intensive application (I can't name name as it is a proprietary product);
2. run CS3;
3. may use it to back up my digital camorder tapes (8mm) to MPEG2 format;
4. may use it as media center to hook up the Xbox 360;
5. may use it to hook up my HD TV to "record" or play HD materials;

I dont know how to do #4 and #5. I know #4 is doable and hope #5 is doable too. For #3, I have a hardware MPEG2 encoder card (PCI, 4 years old), I hope it works fine in the new system.

Within the lifespan of this upgrade, I think HD home movie can be part of the task PC can do. So .... take that into consideration. ....

Am I dreaming here? Tell me what you think.

thanks.

Ahhhh proprietary.....Hmmmm Adobe runs quite well with this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127293

thanks. i did look into this one. you know, people are greedy that's why we always want to push the limit.... is there anything faster than that one and still quiet? can it be the source of HD?

I'm a programmer and do lots of compiling... lot of IO throught eh hardrives.
I set my self up with Highpoint Raid controller, and 4 320Gig seagate drives in raid 10.
Acording to HD Tach 3.0.1.0 My burst speed is 220.9MB/s & average read speed of 124.6MB/s

The reason I went with an external raid controller, is cause if my MB dies. I can replace it with any other MB...

RAID is too complicated to me, as well as costly.

The "IO intensive" app will load data from a network drive. It takes 10-20 minutes to load the data in with my 2.4G 2003 built box. That's what started the thought of building another one. If I didn't want to use the app, I dont have the "urgency" to upgrade at this point. I haven't done much video conversion since getting the MPEG2 hardware encoder 3-4 years ago, so I can wait for another 3-4 years too.

However, if I am going to build one, I do want to have the ability to do whatever on my list.

One thing I forgot to mention, related but could be beyond the scope of this forum is that it's going to be Quad Core cpu (6600), 4G of RAM, ... that part I've already "made up" my mind.

Now the picture is complete. Please share your thoughts too.

thx.

This card is fairly quiet until you get above a 90% load, however it is a great performer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150171

You might find a network drive is slower then local drive.
I have 100BaseT network and have a through put of 8-10 meg a second.
going gigabit would help but then it would only read files as fast as the drive on your networked machine...
only way to get a faster asccess is by raiding drives.
Or use a ram drive. but that can be quite costly.

What kind of application could drive the load to 90%? Probably they are all games?

Yes, network drive is slower than local, but it is more convenient. RAM drive would be very costly as the size of the data could be as big as 100G (I dont use as much each time, its the overall size.).

Getting a good video card is a way to make sure the box is "usable" within 3-5 years horizon.

Yes...you would need to max out high end games to get to that type of load on that card.

You might look at this page for some thoughts on tweaking your LAN speed although this might be a bit mundane for your current useage. http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=1607