Every PC gamer I know has one thing in common. An absolute love of upgrading their computer. There is just something magical about pulling out your tower and disconnecting the spider web of cords, taking off the case and having a look inside. At least once a year most gamers will pull their tower out and thoroughly clean it out, reapply thermal paste and depending on your case wash out the filters. On occasion you will even pull out all of the drives, cards, boards and wires and really get into things.
For me, it is high time I upgrade this aging beast. While the world pounded ahead into the multi core age I have stayed firmly planted in the past happily running a single core P4 with an even more outdated AGP slot. However, as these things tend to do, I am finding my old beastie is not quite what she once was. Slowing down due to aging hardware is just one thing you cannot get away from no matter how you tweak you registry or BIOS.
And so, I have been pricing parts on Newegg.com trying to find the perfect balance between cost and performance. Double and triple checking components to make sure everything is compatible, hoping I will only need to order once. Determining exactly what games I will want to play in the future (Fallout : New Vegas, I am looking at you!) and trying to go one year past them. Comparing benchmark results for various video card and processor setups to find that magical combination of price, future proofing and blistering fast graphics is like a magical treasure hunt for me.
So as I continue to narrow down my choices, reveling in the joys of upgrading, my anticipation only grows because one of the major changes will be to Windows 7. XP has served me well over the years however it is also limiting as Microsoft is slowly making things Vista/7 only, such as DirectX. In the end though I know the upgrade will happen, and I will be ecstatic for awhile loving my new machine. Of course that will only last so long and before I know it, it will be that time again...
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