New PC

[noah]

The nec 3500 is one of the fastest dl drive around and its just £35ish

mines lovely, read speeds are awfull tho. takes me 4 times longer to rip a cd than it did in my old liteon burner!

[nvening]

noah mmmmmmm, well i just rip on my normal drive

[RDL]

I already have a NEC 3500 in one of my rigs, and it is a beast, but this plextor has some nice options, such as the option to burn 100 minutes or 1.1gbs onto 80 min/700mb discs. Also, it is as fast as they come.

I already decided I was getting the 3500.

[Olly1234]

You can flash your 3500's with the latest firmware which fixes the above issues

http://www.micheldeboer.nl/firmware/

[RDL]

OK, I have another question. I decided to go for 2 6600gts I think. But is it worth spending the extra £30 or whatever each to get the Gainward packs over the XFX's? The Gainwards are clocked at higher frequencies with better fans I think, but a lot of Gainwards are very loud. So what's the deal here?

Also, would it be worth just ditching NVidia and get an ATI X850XT PE? I.e the fastest graphics card available right now.

StormPC, do you have any benchmarks on your two 6600gts? And which do you use?

[StormPC]

Here's two 6600GTs (Asus) with stock card clocks and a very mild overclock on a 3500+ (it will clock much higher).

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=3544465

I haven't had much time to bench recently. I really need to push this rig and see what she'll do. I think that's a pretty respectable score though for stock 6600GTs and stock driver settings with no tweaks.

If benching is your deal you'll be happier with the ATi X850. For gaming though the Nvidia solutions are better IMO, although the X850 is quite good for gaming as well. I think the NVidia IQ is a little better and it seems smoother in games.