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Old 12-21-2010, 11:11 PM
Chris Chris is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2009
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Don't feel bad if you don't know everything about everything. That's why we're here . Solid state drives use technology that is very similar to USB flash drives. There are zero moving parts in the drive, so they are far more reliable than normal hard drives. The upside is that you are able to get read and write speeds that are significantly faster than any regular hard drive. The downside is that they're still pretty pricey because they're so new.

The SSD that you picked out should work fine for what you need. You will need to port windows over in order to use it as a boot drive. This can be done with software. Some programs that do this are Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image. Drive Image XML is a free program that will do it also. I haven't used it personally so I can't tell you how good it is. Most of the programs are fairly intuitive to use and shouldn't give you any problems. If so, there are plenty of people that have done exactly what you're trying to do on the internet.

If you do still want to get another 8800GTX, I would be worried about thermal issues. Different motherboard manufacturers have their PCIE slots laid out differently, so it's hard to say if adding another fan in the case would have enough room to move air over the cards, or if the cards will just be too close together. It may be worth it to just get a full tower, if you can afford the desk space and the cost.

If you're running 8800GTX's, your E6600 shouldn't really be a bottleneck if you're running it at 3.0 GHz. Most games aren't fully utilizing more than 2 cores yet anyways. If you can afford it you could pick up a cheap quad core for under $150 (£114 I think).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115207

RAM speed does make a difference with gaming. I had actually forgotten that they made 400 MHz DDR2. Upgrading to either DDR2 800 or 1066 would be a noticeable upgrade for you.

Quick recap. You should upgrade your hard drive to an SSD and upgrade your RAM to something a little faster. A single 8800GTX should be enough to play most new games on medium to high settings.

Let me know if you have any other questions, we're always happy to help.

-Chris
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