SuBX3r0

i assume you got it working?

it's really very simple. when you install a fresh copy of windows, when it gets to the part where it asks which drive to install to simply chose the physical drive you want and make sure you tell it to partition the drive so that you have a smaller (10-20GB) partition just for xp. the first time i did it i chose 10gb, which really was enough, but i did run into some problems from time to time when trying to defrag, you need a certain amounbt of free space in order to get a good defrag, and with the 10gb partition there wasn't always enough. i would recommend at least 15gb, and maybe 20 if you decide to leave your page file on the c: drive. now when you get xp installed i don't remember if the rest of the space was already partitioned and formatted for you or not (had the same install for quite some time now). if it is not partitioned and formatted already you can do this yourself easily in computer management. simply select the unpartition space, and chose to formatt it to ntfs and chose the drive letter you'd like to use for it. from there on all you have to remember to do is to change the drive letter to the other partiton whenever you install new software. i generally only change the drive letter on the install path, keeps things easier IMHO. it's not a terribly hard process, but it definately makes things a bit easier down the road. stuff like video, sound and mobo drivers i usually install to c:, if the os goes down i'll need to reinstall those anyways so it's not a big deal. everything else goes off to my F: drive.

i believe you'd be better of sticking with a regualr cd rom. if you open the cd rom and look at the drive tray you should see that there is a smaller circle inside the larger circle that would hold a normal sized cd. this smaller circle is for mini cd's.

you can get Ultimate Boot CD or UBCD for short. it has tons of dos based utilities, benchmarks, diagnostics and more that all are burned onto a single cd. i'd recommend getting it for everyone just to have something in case of an emergency. it basically compiles a lot of the best tools out there onto one disk with a simple gui. also you may want to look at UBCD4WIN, it uses Barts PE to create a windows environment you can run from cd. it's a little more user friendly and contains only windows based utilities to diagnose a system. you'll need to copy your XP install cd to your hdd to create the disk and there's quite a few steps so it's not as user friendly to get the disk made, but can come in handy down the road. UBCD is really easy to make, i believe you get an iso and just use your favorite bruning software to burn the image.

you can add more partitions for things like dual booting operating systems, creating different logical drives for seperate types of applications and data, and many other things. i use a small partition just for windows and i keep all my installed software on a second logical drive. this way if my os install get's fubar'd i haven't lost all of my installs and personal data. sometimes people like to make a partition near the outer edge of the hdd platters just for the pagefile. the outside of the platters spins faster than the inside so theortically you get better performance when the pagefile is in use. with todays hdd's getting so large you almost need to partition up that space somehow to make things manageable. in the past as hdd's outpaced the os you were forced to partion simply because the os was unable to address a drive past a certain size. there's plenty more reasons to partition as well, this just skims the surface.

monarch has sales all the time, rarely do they last long but they tend to be pretty frequent.

awesome card ain't it? i have a pny 6800gt, pretty much the reference desing like the one you got. gives me litterally double the performance that my 9800pro had.

sata will be faster. ata133 has a speed limit of 133mbps while sata drives at the moment have a theoretical limit of 150mbps. http://www.bigbruin.com/techtip.php?file=008 that site explains it best, quick and simple read.

well hopefully ati will release an agp version of the x800xl. that card competes with the 6800gt performance wise, but should retail at around 299. it's going to be a sweet card if they make an agp. probably my next card purchase. however if it doesn't get released soon, i may be forced to get a 6800gt, which don't get me wrong, great card, but the price is not right.

yeah i am, you sure v-synch is working? sometimes for apparently no reason at all, settings, even if set correctly stop working all together. run fraps or enable the fps command in the game and make sure you are indeed synched with your refresh, otherwise you shouldn't really get any tearing. if you still do then i'd say try the 4.10's. right now my fraps has quit working in all 3d apps, farcry will not load up anymore, and i can't disable v-synch. all that and a hdd that's full of crap and i'd have to say it's time to start all over with a clean slate.

ati has the r480 set to release in the 4th quarter if memory serves. i'm sure there will still be agp cards released, even on the high end. the agp bus isn't a bottleneck yet and it'll be some time before the majority of enthusiasts and home users switch to pci-ex. the x800xt would be quite a leap in performance, b8ut you may want to wait a little while for prices to go down, like i said the r480 is slated for the next few months. and i'm sure nvidia has something new coming out around that time as well. personally if i had the money i'd get the 6800gt right now, but i'll prolly end up with something else 6 months down the road, so my 9800 will do for now.

glad to see it worked, i knew i had read about others doing this on another forum, just wasn't sure how it worked out for them.