New video card... what to buy?

[Technophile]

Originally Posted by Synthetic

nah, im going to do it straight Boot Camp style. XP on it's own partition. I have a 320Gb drive and a 1Tb external. So I can use a good chunk for XP but it will propably be use mostly for games.

Yeah, booting XP straight will definitely be better for games. Although with your rig you could probably play DX9 games through Fusion and not have to bother rebooting. Most necessary apps have native OS X versions these days, but it just seems awesome to be able to run EVERYTHING in the same desktop environment, be it Mac, X, or Windows apps.

edit: BTW, Fusion integrates with Boot Camp so you can run your Boot Camp partition as a VM when you don't feel like rebooting.

Originally Posted by Synthetic

I've been playing with the Hackintosh for a few years. [...snip...] So I said screw it and actually bought one. So much easier to put XP on a Mac then the other way around unless you do what I think your doing and build a PC from known compatible hardware. You using insanely-mac.com?

Yeah I looked at the hackintosh shit back when it first came out and was like ok cool, but uh... no ethernet, no sound, no quartz extreme. Wtf is the point? But now I was upgrading my rig anyway so I figured I'd see what the status was and it looks like with the right combination of hardware and the right hacked install disc you can pretty much just install it and boom there it is all working. Heh, we'll see. Anyway yeah I looked at insanely-mac.com and osx86project.org and did some digging elsewhere. In the end OSX compatibility came second to getting decent hardware for a decent price, but I think I managed to get the best of all worlds. We'll see. If the Hackintosh thing doesn't work out I've still got a kick ass PC which is all I really needed to begin with.

[Tekime]

Originally Posted by Technophile

Maybe you're thinking of 3dfx? The Voodoo2 was the one that could be chained if I remember right. nVidia bought 3dfx a while back so maybe their SLI is based on that tech.

Yes, the Voodoo2! That's exactly it.

Originally Posted by Synthetic

Hey Tek, how is blender? I've been off and on with Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush I have like 50 Digital-Tutors DVD's that have helped alot, and still do. Just wish I had more time to sit and play with them.

I just started using it again and I think it's awesome. Granted I have no experience with Maya and I used 3ds Max so long ago I can barely remember. But it's free, and now that I'm learning the interface I'm finding it pretty nice. The windowing system is pretty cool - you have a lot of control over your workspace. It's worth the download just to check it out.

[Synthetic]

Originally Posted by Technophile

Yeah, booting XP straight will definitely be better for games. Although with your rig you could probably play DX9 games through Fusion and not have to bother rebooting. Most necessary apps have native OS X versions these days, but it just seems awesome to be able to run EVERYTHING in the same desktop environment, be it Mac, X, or Windows apps.

edit: BTW, Fusion integrates with Boot Camp so you can run your Boot Camp partition as a VM when you don't feel like rebooting. .

Yea, I have a feeling I'll be playing with all that just to play with it. I do like the no rebooting part.

[Technophile]

That 8800GTS I linked above is fucking sweet btw. So far the only game I've played is Bioshock... I installed FEAR and the Orange Box last night but I haven't had a chance to check them out yet. It runs Bioshock at MAX settings though (minus the DirectX 10 stuff, since I don't have Vista yet), slicker than shit. It's AWESOME.

[Tekime]

Really glad to hear that, I'm dying to upgrade right now! Just need to hold off a little longer so I can swing the mobo, memory, CPU and new PSU to boot.

[Technophile]

Originally Posted by Tekime

Really glad to hear that, I'm dying to upgrade right now! Just need to hold off a little longer so I can swing the mobo, memory, CPU and new PSU to boot.

It'll be totally worth the wait.