Being proactive is better than reactive, I suppose. With a warranty well in the past, the fan on my GeForce4 Ti 4400 was ready to pack ‘er in. To stem any “hot” issues, I picked up a GeForce FX 5700LE from Bestek; just up the street from Dena’s office. For whatever reason, they were the cheapest in town and online. $97 for that card isn’t too shabby 😉
I didn’t want to go hardcore and get a high-end Radeon or GeForce6, and figured the FX 5700LE would be a slight improvement, but not a killer one, over what I had. Ideally, I’d get a PCIe card which requires a new mobo. In that case, I’d be building a new computer. But since Dena and I have had enough of apartment dwelling, we’re saving our money. If I had my way, I’d have a few systems. For day-to-day stuff like email, IM and Web browsing, I’d go with a Mac Mini. My gaming rig would have to be a tricked-out Windows computer. I’d keep another Windows computer for Windows apps development and also have a Debian or Ubuntu computer for UNIX-y development stuff. And of course those dev computers would have a dual-monitor setup; I’ve been spoiled by it at work and constantly wondered how I’ve gone without it for so long 😉 Finally, I’d have a server running OpenBSD or FreeBSD to store and share everything. Maybe toss in a MythTV box as a PVR like the dudes from Systm mention here.
