So if you didn’t know, my video card in my desktop pretty much died on Saturday.  It was working fine until I rebooted after installing XP SP3.  Upon loading windows, the computer hung.  Every single reboot.  I tried uninstalling SP3 in safe mode (which worked) but it didn’t affect anything.  I thought about it for a little bit, especially how safe mode worked but regular booting didn’t, until I thought that it might be my video card.  I uninstalled the drivers in safe mode and rebooted and lo and behold it loaded into XP.  I thought well its good I didn’t lose any data, but it didn’t look good for my video card.  In ATI Tool instead of displaying its name as a X800 PRO VIVO, it instead called it an AGP Device 0×45something with 0 working pipelines.  Uh oh I thought.  I reflashed the card’s BIOS, tried downmodding it back to a X800 PRO, and finally took the card out and cleaned all the thermal compound off in case it had bridged some contacts.  Nothing.  It was dead.  So I talked to my parents and worked out a deal that I could order a new computer now (I don’t have the money just yet) and they would cover it and buy my old desktop off of me at fair market value and would buy a video card for it so it could become the new family computer (they still are using their old 700MHz PIII).  So I agreed and ordered my new computer last night! Specs:

CPU – Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz

Motherboard – ASUS P5K Premium WiFi

RAM – 4GB (2×2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066

Video Card – XFX Geforce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB

Hard Drive – Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA2

Case – Antec P182

Power Supply – Corsair 550VX

CPU Cooling – Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme with a Scythe SFF21F 63CFM

DVD Writer – Lite-On LH-20A1S SATA

Generic Floppy Drive (yes I still want one)

Add these to what I already have:

Monitor – Dell 2407WFP

Keyboard – Logitech Elite

Mouse – Logitech Mx518

Speakers – Altec Lansing ATP3

UPS – Belkin 1200VA

And its gonna be a really bangin system!  The parts are ordered and should arrive sometime early next week hopefully!  If I don’t get too excited building it I will take some pics of the process and write a post about it.  Hopefully from my new computer ;) .