Was there a pic there? Can't see it

Anyways, my spot of luck. Called TD and they don't carry any of the items except for the RAM. So I said alright, hide the RAM for me.

I'll just go downtown Toronto on Monday and go straight to Filtech. I'll call them tomorrow as I missed their store hours today, but they're selling the 8800 GT 512 OC for over $100 less than TD. As for the HDD, I was going for the WD 400GB 16MB from TD. Well, Filtech has the same HDD with 500GB for the same price. No-brainer there.
As for the RAM, they have the OCZ Rev-2 2GB and it's considerably cheaper than at TD.
Considering the mobo, I was planning on the XFX nForce 680i LT SLI from TD, which they don't have. Filtech has the eVGA variant and it's still the same brand and chipset I was looking for.

All in all, I'll end up saving a lot of money and getting what I need. So fingers crossed for Filtech having them all in-store

BTW, if you're curious: http://www.filtechcomputer.com/

Also, thanks for the heads up. Hard to believe, but this is my first step into PCI-E so any tips you have will be much appreciated. And yep, I know about all the problems nForce's 680i chipsets have had. As long as I flash the BIOS right after installing XP, I should be fine.

Well...the 8800GT is nowhere to be found in the entire country because the Canadian distributors made a big doodoo. Gonna have to delay this project by another week

Eh, forgot to update the thread, but I ordered everything a few days ago.

All from Filtech (with these prices, I'd be crazy not to):

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66 GHz (1333MHz) 4MB L2 Cache Socket 775 Processor - $189.99

OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz NVIDIA SLI-Ready XTC Edition 2GB (2x1024MB) Dual Channel Kit - $91 ($56 after MIR)

WD5000AAKS Caviar 500GBSATAII 7200RPM 16MB Buffer (OEM) - $100

eVGA 8800GT 512MB Ssc Edition 512MB DDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI-I HDTV Out DIRECTX10 Video Card - $294

Arctic ACFZP7 Freezer 7 Pro for socket 775 - $26.99

BFG nVidia nForce 680i LT Socket 775 nVidia nForce 680i Sli - $172

2m DVI to DVI (DVI-D) Digital Dual Link 24-pin M/M - $22


That E6750 is going to make sure nothing bottlenecks in this system

Cool. Let us know how it runs.

XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog arrived today and damn does it look superb
Saturday I'll go down to Filtech to pick up the rest of the pieces. Also I substituted the RAM back to my first choice, which is the OCZ 2GB Platinum XTC Rev-2.
Video card was $305 including tax and shipping from NCIX.
Rest of the hardware will be $646 including tax from Filtech. I'm pretty much getting the best bang for the buck in this project.
Hopefully gonna be up and running on Saturday evening :up:

Pics when I've got everything together. Alpha Dog came with Company of Heroes as well. I've got Crysis, Gears of War, Need For Speed Pro Street, Call of Duty 4, and Colin McRae DiRT just waiting to get installed.

Sounds good!

Let us know how it goes.

Project total for the 500GB HDD, RAM, GPU, CPU, and mobo: $951

Ultra X-Finity 600W
BFG nVidia nForce 680i LT SLI LGA775 with on-board Realtek HD Audio
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz LGA775
XFX 8800GT XT (Alpha Dog) 512MB 640MHz PCI-E
2GB OCZ Platinum XTC Rev-2 Dual-Channel
Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM 16MB cache SATA-II
Western Digital 500GB 7200RPM 16MB cache SATA-II
19" LG L1970HR Flatron Slim 2ms 2000:1 DCR LCD Digital
Logitech X-530 5.1 Surround Sound System
Windows XP SP2

Destroys CoD4, Gears of War, BF2142, NFS Pro Street, and Company of Heroes.
Doesn't take crap from Crysis either.

GG.

Sweet!

Great system for that price.

You might want to check BFG for BIOS updates.

My eVGA 680i has had 8 revisions since it's initial release.

Also check nVIDIA for the latest drivers for 8800's.

They have also been updating about every three months or so.

In fact I just rechecked for myself and there is a new NVIDIA driver as of:

November 6, 2007

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

Among the documents:

What’s New in Release 163
• Improved compatibility and performance for NVIDIA SLI™ technology on
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0c and OpenGL® 2.1 applications.
• Improved compatibility for The Way It’s Meant To Be Played™ game titles:
BioShock, Crysis, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Hellgate: London, and
World in Conflict.
• Added PureVideo™ HD decode acceleration for GeForce 8600, 8500 and
8400 series GPUs.
• Improved performance of the graphics memory manager on GeForce 8
series GPUs running DirectX 9 applications in single‐GPU and NVIDIA SLI
configurations.
These improvements solve cases of reported performance slowdowns in some 3D applications
with high graphics settings and resolutions.
• Improved compatibility with PT Boats: Knights of the Sea
• Added NVIDIA SLI profile for Team Fortress 2

If you upgrade remember to uninstall your old driver first.

I wish they'd figure out an easier way but the upgrade is always worth it.

Already using the latest

I downloaded it a day before reformatting. The BFG 680i LT SLI was up to BIOS P05, so I quickly upgraded that with nVidia's nice and easy nTune software. It was actually one of the first things I did, since I had read about a lot of chipset problems, mostly with the EVGA versions.

But last night I plugged in my retired IDE HDD as a slave so I could grab some important application data files for Firefox and MSN
I've been enjoying this PC quite a bit, everything is just working perfectly.
Also set the RAM timings from 5-5-5-15 to 4-4-4-15 right after increasing the memory voltage from 1.85 to 2.1. Gotta get the most out of that great RAM

Now as soon as Epic patch Gears of War to no longer delete saves and settings, I'll be good to go. The game looks and runs fantastic, just can't be arsed to play the first levels over and over again