help wth my new build, what to troubleshoot next or replace

I have a question if anyone can help. I just bought the parts for ,y new rig and I an having numerous problems. Here is a list of my parts first;

1) Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

2) GIGABYTE GA-P35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

3) DIAMOND 2900XT1GPE Radeon HD 2900XT 1GB 512-bit GDDR4 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

4) Antec TruePower Quattro TPQ-1000 ATX12V / EPS12V 1000W Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CUL, FCC, TUV, CE, C-tick, CCC, CB - Retail

5) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail unfortunately it is the B3 stepping.

6) 3 OCZ 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory (ATI CrossFire Certified) Model OCZ2A8001G - Retail -3gigs total`

7) 2 SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

8) 1 BenQ FP94VW Silver-Black 19" 2ms (GTG) DVI Widescreen HDMI LCD Monitor - Retail

9) 2 Scythe S-FLEX SFF21F 120mm Case Fan - Retail

10) Razer Mantis Control Mouse Pad - Full Retail Multi Language - Retail

11) Logitech Battlefield 2142 G5 /Software bundle Edition - Retail `mouse came with the game for half of what they were asking just for the mouse`

12) 1 ASUS 18X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe and 14X DVD-RAM Write Black SATA Model DRW-1814BLT - Retail

13) 1 Thermalright Ultima-90 CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / AM2) - Core 2 Quad & Extreme Ready using 1 of the fans I purchased to cool it. unfortunately I purchased a 3 pin instead on a 4 pin the CPU fan header has and have it hooker up to a 4 pin molex connector.

14) 1 Bigfoot Networks Killer NIC M1 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI Network Adapter with a 400 MHz Network Processing Unit (NPU) 1 x RJ-45, 1 x USB2.0 - Retail ` whatever people are saying bad about this card is just silly. I have DSL 2 megs down and 512 up and played halo before it started wierding out and people accused me of hacking! I actially scored a couple of times. this NIC rocks in my book. I am saving up for my wife`s machine now!`

- O.K. , here is what I have done so far with different Operating systems(only 1 system installed at the time. I made sure I had everything connected securely and no connectors half on or off. I had the latest drivers and firmware and updated everything by the book( I even called the product manufacturer to make sure.) my first attempt was at windows vista ultimate X64. Did all of the drivers and updates first on a clean install. kinda worked but was dogy and slow, which supprised me for a machine that has cost almost 3K with shipping and everything.

I did not like the performance and contacted all manufacturers except god himself and he was busy with his own build.( LOL). I tried vista ultimate 32 and it was the same. tried to use the overclock feature on the video card and bsod of Irq of less than or not equal - just like the good old xp days. whenever I tried the overclock feature of the video card it did the bsod in vista or locked up and rebooted.

I switched to my trusty xp because I have gamed on it with other machines without no problems. I installed windows xp pro x64 and found out that alot of the vista ready or compatable software was not yet ready and most ran fine in xp pro x64. My computer is still slow and dogy and just not what one would expect for the money spent ( I think an striped down e machine could whip my rig without breaking a sweat).

So I have 10 days to either return most of the parts to newegg or deal with the mfg. Any suggestions? good luck charms, or any devine intervenion required to make this POS work. PLEASE HELP! In the name of decency, gaming, and just reliability overal, and gaming,( er did I mention that again, sorry rambling in my delustional state of hardware madness and futility).

So all joking aside please respond, any help,advice or suggestions are welcome.

speedbump1963

Well, looking over your build, I'd say you spent WAY too much on it. It's an awesome build, but the price for that build was quite high, and is not really much better than other builds that are significantly less. I'm not sure if this is your first build, or if you are experienced and something is just not right. I personally HATE ATI video cards. I had significant issues with them a few years ago(every game I played had to have special patches from it's company installed to play the game without terrible glitching). So I want to say your video card is broke(not sure if it's because of your video card problems or just my personal experience with ATI). I'd try using a spare video card just to see what happens. Get rid of that damn Killer NIC too. It's NOT worth the money!

You haven't talked much about your troubleshooting efforts. Can you give us CPU temps? Can you tell us what you have done to try to narrow down the problem? Have you tried stripping the system to the miminum to boot and see what happens? Try a RAM test too.

From reading your post, it just seems like you have unrealistic expectations. It's hard to compare "slow" to "nothing". Slow as in windows takes 5 minutes to load, slow as in Doom 3 plays at 10 fps at 1600x1200 4xAA 8XAF? Great that you listed all your parts, but no one can tell you if your system is slow if you can't give a basis for what you are comparing it to.

Quad Core at 2.4 ghz will seem slower in some applications than a P4 3.4 ghz, because the raw computing speed of 1 core is slower. Quad core allows for better multi-tasking and applications that utilize multi-core architectures will run better.

Try again...