A few years later, time to build another system

Well lookie here. I've gotten everything built, set up, installed, tested, etc.- posting from the new computer as we speak.

Thanks again for everyone's help!

m19

 

I wish you many happy and trouble free years of computing with your new baby.:cool

 

Like I'd mentioned before, I'm starting to look more into a monitor update to replace my current Viewsonic CRT. I've been breaking in my system with Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 this past week and the performance on both is just outstanding– I never understood the big hoopla about AA and post-effects until I could actually run them. :-D The thing is, I'm running games at 1152x864 on my CRT right now, and I'm concerned how much of a performance hit I'll be taking if I jump up to a 1440x900 or worse, to 1680x1050.

I understand there are some benchmark tools out there. Assuming my current monitor can go that high (doubtful...) I'm planning on running some comparison tests to see how valid or unfounded my concerns are, but do any of you guys have a system to similar to my new one and can shed some performance light on things? Do you think an LCD native to 1680x1050 bring my system to its knees? Is 1440x900 more "future-proof" for being able to continue running graphic-intensive games? Or am I worrying over nothing?

Given that I've been impressed with its performance currently, I looked up some FC2 benchmarks and found this. There's a graph on there for my 9800GTX+; at 1680x1050, it shows the average FPS to only be around 23... :-o Granted, that's at "very high" settings with 4x AA on– I think I'm probably running high with 2x AA at the moment, so the comparison's a little off, but that worries me. If anything, perhaps I should just stick to a 19" LCD at 1440x900? That's still higher than what I've got now and would give me the extra widescreen area to do my Photoshopping and whatnot.

m19