I get asked a lot about what hardware I use in my gaming rig, what I recommend for upgrades and even what’s the best keyboard, mouse etc. Now yes I test a lot of stuff, but the only way to really get to know something is to use it full time.

I love the people I come across that are still using XP, telling me how bad Vista is and when I tell them I use Vista on my main work PC (notebook) and my gaming PC, they kinda get thrown back and ask why? We have the whole industry telling us how it sux and XP is better because it’s faster and simpler. The funny thing is I remember people saying the same thing about Windows XP vs 2K. Does the whole industry forget the Infinite Loop or NV Loop/BSOD error? I spent months working on that problem with gamers back in 2002. That very article got hundreds of thousands hits. I got emails for Microsoft, graphics chip manufactures and game developers about it.  XP was so bad with 3d graphics you had to be mad to use it and most of us were!

XP was slower than 2K, had all sorts of driver problems and was horrid for games, but we all still went out and installed it. XP didn’t come of age until XP service pack 2. 

It didn’t start there, the same thing happened with Windows 98 when it come out. OMG it was slower than Windows 95! It had all sorts of driver problems and lots of your old games didn’t work on it. And you know what? I also remember the lines to get windows 95. The mad rush on that August night to get an OS that was so over-bloated with extra graphics hogwash that most people who got it had to upgrade just to run a screensaver on it. Long live windows 3.1 right?

Now yes Vista is slow at the start as it organizes your hard drive. I would say it takes about 2 weeks of use for Vista to settle in, get all its updates and drivers sorted, before you get a nice experience, but the gold is there at the end of the rainbow. Vista does sort itself out. We have Service pack 1 now that I’m using on this notebook and it fixes a lot of the bugs and quirks. You get a very nice interface to work with and you get DX10. I could not see myself going back to XP.

As to the hardware I use. For my gaming rig it is.

Intel Core2 6700 @ 2.67ghz
4 Gb DDR2
Geforce 8800 GTX ultra
On a MSI P6Ni Nforce 650i
2x Samsung 22” widescreen LCDs.

All my peripherals are Logitech: G15 keyboard, G7 mouse,  Logitech Mic, Joystick etc. My desk looks like an add for Logitech. My case is an Altech server case that I moded myself. We have a video coming up on the case mod this week. I recommend what I use. If it's not good enough for me or I haven’t spent a lot of time with it, I find it hard to have an opinion on it. I’m a type of hands on guy.