Well, kinda painfull, but I have figured out the laptop platform I have been so heavy relying on as my gaming platform has come to an end. Since my lenovo laptop is powered by an intel chipset 765, new games ignore this embeded chipset and only play nice with Nvidia or ATI.

3D is the biggest killer for me. It means I have to switch gears and do a significant investment to get operational to a level I am happy and my desktop canperform decently the task of killig machine.

Tabula Rasa brought my wonderfully powerful X61 on its knees. Pushing all possible drivers in, and pushing driver and OS to the far limit, and talked for hours to the intel chipset so in almost believed it was an Nvidia chip.

Sadly the TR software was to clever and tossed to checks in it the Intel didn't dig... and it blew a blue screen to me... (my very first ones on Vista.... Even to protection of putting the video part outside the HAL didn't prevented a hard hang..

So ended up with a Nvidia 6600 from a friend of mine. Card is inferiour to the 765 cm chipset, still.. it did something the the 765 couldn't do. Play TR .. it is not clean and clear... but it runs... @ 10 fps it is playable... moving from 1680*1050 down, it becomes even better.. but I don't wanna loose too much on my 22" wide screen...

Days later I tried it all on my wifes PC I build last year.. (specs: T6300, 2GB, P5BDelux, 8600GTS OC 756Mhz) and it played on 1680*1050 like a dream... so..conclusion...

I need a new rig.. and a fast one..

T6600 or so, but a strong MB and a heap of memory and a very smooth running DX10 card. I am thinking to get an 8600GTS card as well.. 512MB and we can scream away...

Yes, I have been thinkning that as the game play gets more intense, I might need a faster video card too. Mine seems to handle most of the game play, but the base raids seem to cause excessive lagging. There's just too much video 3D to render. Of course, one upgrade deserves another, so I have to be careful here. I might end up with a new MB and CPU along the way. I wonder how long my dual channel P4 is going to last?

i discovered that my comp hit a roadblock when i tried playing Gears of War. that game isn't even a DX10 game. nevertheless, i realized it's upgrade time. and deathbane is right about "one upgrade deserving another." it's a downward spiral in the pocketbook, but a necessity.

i'm upgrading to pci-e, which means bye bye to my motherboard. which means new processor core, faster fsb, etc. . . . and of course that means i gotta get atleast DDR2 ram to match the speed of the new processor and mobo bus (atleast 800mhz). i wouldn't dare slow down my bus speed w/ slow DDR1.

then there's my old SATA drives, at a nice 1.5gbits . . . . which i will eventually replace with faster SATA2. i wouldn't dare bottleneck my new comp w/ slow SATA transfer rates.

money money money money money money money money money.

Well, it is is true, once you start to pull over stuff, you might end up with a pretty decent bill from a PC company.

Since I don't really have the cash to do it, I will be forced to take the cheap man's solution, is fiurst buy a PCI-e card, 8600GTS OC-ed most likely.

Then the upgrade next to a T6600 or so with MB and 4GB of ram. I mean, not cheappo, but got to make it all work right ?

I bet that will keep the stuff rolling for a bit.. (1 or 2 yrs)

Agreed, the last thing you want to do however, is reformat your HD and re-install all your software. So, my upgrades tend to push this back as far as possible or as necessary. Hence, my preference of XP over Vista.

Agree... Vista isn't overly supported by a lot of the "older" games. That is where a lot of issues are. But Vista is pretty good in allowing you to run older stuff (if well programmed) by casting a virtual enviourment around the game and ensuring the game runs fine without goiung flat on it's face.

Think the 4GB mem you plunk in your vista box will do good for the performance, so no sweat... I run a vista box on 2 gig, and it is screaming...