Windows 7: My Next Machine

Good memories. The undefendable QB rollout pass to the opposite sideline. B-17 Bomber.

Oh yeah.

Sad thing is I still go to flea markets and pick up broken old console repair and then sell them.

One more thing to consider if i had just an X-Box i would not have Windows 7 ... therefor i would not be here

I had to Google that, said the old man. The WoW "Corrupted Blood plague incident" was an interesting read.

So, check this out... a nephew has recently chosen to play WoW and has asked my assistance in upgrading his machine. I bought him this eMachine T5246 last year ($200). I told him when I gave him the machine that it would serve his needs for a few years unless he decided to game on it. The RAM is maxed at 2GB. What video card can I get for < $100 US that will support WoW on this machine? Like this?

What OS and resolution does he play on? Does he raid or mostly pvp? WoW really isn't an performance intense game, especially since they removed 40 man raids but if he isn't playing w/ all the effects enabled he really is missing out.

Btw, The Corrupted Blood glitch was pretty fun though frustrating as well.

And the 9500 GT would be enough but it is PCI-e 2.0, the eMachine is probably only PCI-e 1.

What is funny is that when I played WoW I couldn't afford to upgrade my machine, I used whatever systems I got from work. When I quit I made a couple thousand from selling my accounts. I built a pretty bad @$$ gaming system but never really utilized it.

I understand. I told him that PCI-e 2.0 would future proof his investment a bit, and will also play in the 1.0 slot.

OS: Currently Vista32, but I have scheduled him for some partition resizing and an install of Windows 7-64.

Res: His monitor supports 1440x900

Raid and pvp: must be WoW jargon ?!?

WoW is not installed at this time and he is travelling out of the country soon. I will do the work on his machine the week of July 19.

BTW: Your Yammm crashed on me instantly on it's first execution, but is running fine now. VLC 1.0 has released and I am a bit excited about ditching WiMP this weekend.

* Off to some WoW research...brb

At that resolution the 9500 GT will be more than sufficient. With only 2 GBs of RAM a fast ReadyBoost drive would help as well for a relatively low cost.

PvE = Player versus environment
PvP = Player versus player
A raid typically refers to a group of 10 or more players working togethor in PvE

In terms of Yammm, if there are any problems, suggestions or improvements I can make please contribute to Yammm - Yet Another Media Meta Manager. A new version will be release soon (this weekend I hope pending no emergencies at home) but I'll be working on a new build shortly afterwards.

Maybe I'm confused here...but doesn't the Intel E6700 CPU run on a 1066 front side bus? And the Intel FSB is quad-pumped, so if we divide 1066 by 4, we end up with 266Mhz. So, in the event of DDR2 RAM...the FSB speed of 266 x 2 = 533Mhz...would put the RAM at a 1:1 ratio with the CPU.

It's my understanding that the CPU and the RAM aren't going to communicate any faster than the Front Side Bus speed will allow. I think you are confusing the FSB speed total of 1066 with your RAM speed of 1066...since the FSB speed is 4x and the ram speed is 2x.

Technically, with your DDR2 1066 ram, if you divide 1066 by 2 you would get 533Mhz. So, you should be able to effectively run your FSB at 533Mhz and if it were quad-pumped that would be a FSB speed of 2133 in order to run that at the full rated speed.

So, with your CPU running at stock clock speeds (no overclocking) DDR2 533 RAM would have been fast enough to run as fast as your system could possibly go. DDR2 667 would have given you some heardroom for overclocking your CPU a bit (up from 266 to 333) and DDR2 800 would have given you the ability to up your CPU even more (from 266 to 400) while still running at 100% the speed of your system.

Somebody can correct me if I am wrong.