• Do any needed hardware upgrades and test the computer thoroughly
• Optimize your system
• Make sure there is enough hard drive space to install games
• Defragment hard drive
• Run a virus check

• RAM: At least 2 GB RAM, dual-channel, name brand. It doesn't hurt to put 4 GB in a system running a 32-bit OS, but it will only use 3GB of it. Don't bother with more than 4 GB for gaming, since no current games benefit from more than 3 GB.
• Video Card: nVidia chipset, PCIe, supports at least DX10. I recommend nVidia GeForce GTS 250 512 MB.
• CPU: Dual-core or better, 64-bit capable and is 3 GHz or higher actual speed. Suggestions: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, AMD Athlon II X3 435
• Motherboard: Built-in 1000T network, SATA 3.0 NCQ, PCIe, compatible with dual-channel RAM or better. I recommend Gigabyte, ASUS and EVGA motherboards. I recommend avoiding ECS and Biostar.
• Hard Drive: SATA 3.0 with NCQ and at least a 16 MB buffer. I recommend Seagate. I also recommend getting two and putting them in a RAID-0 (striped).
• Case: Uses 120mm or larger fans (more air current and less noise than 80mm). Has a fan that blows outside air directly on the CPU and/or graphics card, and a fan that blows out the top is nice. I'm a big fan of Antec cases. They are built well, they won't cut your hands, and they have great air flow. The Antec Three Hundred is an outstanding case for $50.
• Power Supply: 450-watt minimum, ATX 12V v2.2 or better. Make sure it has two 6-pin PCI-E connectors for modern graphics cards, SATA power connectors for your hard drives, and a 24-pin connector for the motherboard. I like Antec power supplies. Avoid generic power supplies!
• LCD: 8-bit color or higher, 8ms or lower response time white-to-black, 1000:1 or higher actual contrast ratio, dynamic contrast, DVI or HDMI connector to PC (not VGA)

If you have less than 2 GB of RAM, you should upgrade to 2 GB right away. You will see a significant performance boost in Windows applications and games with more RAM. It is the cheapest upgrade, and usually has the most striking results.

Battlefield 2 runs 20% faster with 2 GB RAM compared to 1 GB. In fact, on my machine running the BF2 Nations At War mod with the highest settings at 1680x1050, my peak RAM usage was 2.2 GB. If I didn't have 4GB, there would have been disk swapping as a result. With lower settings, NAW uses 1.7 GB of RAM. All games made since 2004 will benefit from more than 1 GB RAM. With only 1 GB RAM, you will definitely get disk swapping in newer games, which will slow your game to a crawl.

Windows Vista requires minimum 2 GB of RAM. It consumes 1 GB of RAM just to boot up! The sweet spot for Vista is 4 GB RAM (you don't see performance gains in Vista beyond 4 GB). So if you plan to switch to Vista (don't do it!) or Windows 7 (proceed with caution), you should upgrade your RAM to 4 GB.

Keep in mind that if you get more than 2 GB RAM, you will need a 64-bit OS to use all of it. The 32-bit versions of XP, Vista and Windows 7 (which are the standard versions) can only access 2.5 to 3.3 GB RAM. There is no harm in having 4GB with a 32-bit OS. You just won't be able to use all of your RAM. 3GB isn't too bad, though. 32-bit programs (including most games) can only access 2GB of RAM each. With 3GB available, your game can use the full 2GB available to it without swapping, and the OS and background tasks still have 1GB of RAM available without causing your system to swap memory to the hard drive.

On the flip-side, there isn't any point in getting 6 or 8 GB of RAM if you are only running 32-bit programs (like most games, and most software for that matter), even on a 64-bit OS, because 32-bit games and programs can use a maximum of 2GB each. You could have several programs running simultaneously using 2GB each, but that rarely happens in the real world, and never with gaming. As of April 2009, there are no games that perform better with more than 3 GB RAM. On the other hand, if you want to do video production, and plan to have Adobe Premiere, Adobe After-Effects, and Adobe Encore running all at the same time, then 8GB is probably a good idea.

I highly recommend buying a name brand of RAM, such as G.Skill, Kingston, OCX, Crucial or Patriot. I also recommend buying RAM in twin-packs (2 DIMMs sold together). That way you know for sure the two DIMMs will work well together (some don't). I'm particularly fond of G.Skill RAM at the moment. It's cheap, but the quality is great. And you'll enjoy reading the badly translated package the memory comes in.

Avoid Corsair RAM. They are dishonest about their speed. If the package claims it is CAS 2, then it is really CAS 3. If it claims to be DDR2-1066, then it is really DDR2-800. In both cases, you MIGHT be able to manually overclock it to the claimed speed, but your BIOS will autoconfigure it at the slower speeds. Stick with honest memory companies.

If you have 2GB or more of RAM, then your graphics card is the next thing to upgrade. You should be running at least a GeForce 8 series card. Games will run faster on newer graphics cards, even with an older CPU, so long as your CPU is fast enough to drive the graphics card to its potential. For example, I have a GeForce 7900GS (circa 2006). It runs at the exact same speed on my Athlon 64 3400+ (circa 2004) as it does on my Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (circa 2006). That's because the Athlon 64 3400+ is fast enough to drive the card to its potential. For another example, I see a 24% increase in my 8800GTS (circa 2006) graphics speed between my Athlon 64 3400+ and my Athlon X2 5200+ (circa 2007), but no change between the 5200+ and my overclocked E8500 (circa 2008), so the 5200+ can drive my 8800GTS to its potential. For yet another example, I saw a 22% speed increase with the GTX 260 (circa 2008) on my E8500 vs. my E6600. In fact, I haven't quite hit the performance ceiling of the GTX 260 by overclocking my E8500 to 4.18GHz. The bottom line is, you may see a performance increase in games by upgrading your CPU, but if your graphics card is already being driven to its potential, a graphics card upgrade would be more beneficial. There are a few exceptions to this, which I will discuss in the CPU section.

I recommend a graphics card that supports at least DirectX 10 and Shader Model 3 in hardware. I much prefer nVidia cards for better performance, quality, dependability, value, and infinitely better drivers.

AGP is a dead-end. You're better off upgrading to a PCIe motherboard than trying to get more life out of your old AGP system. You will spend a lot less money, and get a lot more bang for your buck. This is partially due to the fact that an AGP motherboard won't support the latest CPU technologies, so your CPU becomes the bottleneck. But even the latest AGP graphics cards are several generations old. Don't expect an AGP system to perform well with the latest games, or even older games. For instance, there isn't an AGP card out there that can play Nations at War at a solid 60 FPS, even with the lowest in-game settings and a very fast CPU.

For PCIe, your choices are much better (and cheaper) than AGP. For around $80, you can get an nVidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB, which is 3% faster than the 8800GTS card I splurged $470 for in November 2006! For about $110, you can pick up an nVidia GeForce GTS 250 512MB, which is an outstanding graphics card. It is about 50% faster than the 9600GT, and is definitely the best bang for your buck right now. FYI, the GTS 250 is basically a rebadged 9800GTX+. For $165, you can get an nVidia GeForce GTX 260 896MB, which is 23% faster than the GTS 250, if you have the CPU to drive it.

Right now, graphics cards are getting so fast that your CPU could be a bottleneck. For example, on my Athlon X2 7750+ overclocked to 3GHz, my GTX260 is only 1.2% faster than my GTS250. On a faster CPU, the GTX260 is 18.5% faster than the GTS250. My 3GHz 7750+ is clearly not driving the GTX260 to its potential. My E8500 at 4.18GHz drives the GTX260 28% faster than the 7750+. Keeping that in mind, if you don't have a really fast CPU, it may not be worth the money to buy a super-fast graphics card.

For the games we play at my LAN parties, you will want a GeForce 8800GTS or faster. The performance is just not good enough on my 8600GTS, 7900GS or 7800GT, even with a fast CPU. The least graphics card I can recommend is the GeForce 9600GSO, if you can still find it.

If you still have a single-core processor, you should upgrade. You will see a noticeable improvement in speed by upgrading to a multi-core CPU. Most popular games made since 2008 do not run well on a single-core processor.

As I mentioned before, you want to make sure your CPU is fast enough to drive your graphics card. As long as your CPU is fast enough for your graphics card, then unless you are doing video processing or some other CPU-intensive task, having a faster CPU won't benefit you much.

There are some exceptions to this. Some games require a beefy CPU, but don't require a very fast graphics card. One example of this is Battlefield 2, because BF2 is poorly programmed. We play Nations at War (a BF2 mod) at LAN parties and online, so this is something to keep in mind. In my testing, I found that my Athlon 64 3400+ system, a 2.4GHz single-core, and one of the fastest single-core systems available, couldn't play NAW at a solid 60FPS, even using my 8800GTS graphics card at the lowest settings. But my Core 2 Duo E6600 system (2.4GHz dual-core) could play NAW at a solid 60FPS with my 7800GT card, which is my slowest PCIe graphics card, at the highest in-game settings. According to my testing, you need a 3DMark06 CPU score of 2000 or better in order to play NAW at a solid 60FPS. The fastest single-core CPU gets around 1100, and my testing showed that is not fast enough. I had similar results with Left4Dead. Any of my dual-core processors are fast enough to provide a solid 60FPS experience in L4D, but none of my single-core processors are fast enough, even with my fastest graphics card.

Tests show that games get an 80% boost in speed by going from a single-core to a dual-core of the same speed. A triple-core is nearly twice as fast as a same-clocked single-core in games, and 20% faster than a same-clocked dual-core. There is currently no benefit with a quad-core for gaming compared to a triple-core, unless you have CPU-consuming tasks running in the background, such as an anti-virus scan (which you will typically disable while gaming anyway). For multi-threaded applications, a quad-core is 87% faster than a single-core, and 35% faster than a dual-core.

The Athlon II X3 435 is a nice triple-core for about $75, and the 2.9GHz clock speed is great. I used to recommend only dual-core processors, but at that price and speed, the Athlon II X3 435 is definitely the best bang for your buck, and is more future-proof than a dual-core. This CPU can handle any current game you throw at it. This CPU With a motherboard and 4GB of DDR3 RAM would set you back around $250, and would be an outstanding upgrade from a single-core or a slower dual-core.

If you have more money to spend, the Intel Core i5-750 is a great choice. It is a strong performer both for single and multi-threaded applications. The CPU, motherboard and 4GB RAM will set you back about $400. It is 37% faster than the Athlon II X3 435 for single-threaded applications, and 65% faster for multi-threaded. If you overclock it, it will match performance with the 5x more expensive i7-975, the current fastest processor available.

The only reasons to upgrade a motherboard is if your current one is broken, or if you want to upgrade your CPU or graphics card, and your current motherboard won't support it. For example, if you have an AGP motherboard, you definitely want to upgrade to a motherboard with PCIe so you can use the latest graphics cards. However, I recommend against upgrading just the graphics slot on a motherboard. If you have an AGP slot in your motherboard, then your CPU is likely very old as well. Upgrade to a new motherboard and processor at the same time. It's worth the extra cost. If you haven't upgraded in a while, you may also need to upgrade your RAM.

It doesn't hurt to have a motherboard with onboard stuff like sound and networking. In the past this was bad, because the onboard components performed very poorly compared to PCI versions. These days, the onboard stuff works better than most of the PCI alternatives, and having fewer PCI cards in your case means your computer will run cooler. Also, things like gigabit networking run much faster when they are onboard, because they are not limited to the speed of the PCI bus. Onboard devices will take some CPU power to run, but with a modern multi-core processor, you won't even notice.

I recommend AMD or nVidia chipsets. For AMD processors, an AMD chipset is a great choice. Some AMD chipsets have Advanced Clock Calibration, which can unlock extra cores on some dual and triple-core AMD CPUs. There are fewer driver issues now with AMD chipsets than there used to be.

The best motherboard brands are EVGA, Asus and Gigabyte. Expect to pay $100 to $400 for a good motherboard.

Note: Fry's will often give away cheap motherboards with CPUs. Often these motherboards are customer returns. You can expect the motherboards to die in a year or two at best, but you'll have a free motherboard in the meantime. You can always replace the motherboard later, since the CPU will still work fine. And often you will get a significant discount on the CPU as well. For example, I bought an Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 bundled with an ECS G31T-M motherboard for $180 at Fry's. At the time, NewEgg had the best price for an E8500, which was $195. I got the CPU for $15 less than that, and got a free motherboard as well. More recently, I got an E8400 with a Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L motherboard for $120. At the time, NewEgg sold the motherboard for $80, and the E8400 for $168. I got it for half off! Watch the Fry's ads for these kinds of deals.

Fry's stopped carrying ECS motherboards, apparently due to the low quality and high return rate. They replaced ECS motherboards with Biostar, which is still pretty low quality. I don't recommend ECS or Biostar motherboards. They don't tend to overclock well, and they won't last long (often less than a year) before they die.

I recommend a 7200 RPM Serial ATA (SATA) II 3 Gbps NCQ-capable hard drive or better with at least an 8 MB buffer. I recommend Seagate and Maxtor for brands, and I don't recommend Western Digital. Maxtors and Seagates (in my experience) run cooler and quieter and have better reliability. I've seen many WDs die, and they tend to run extremely loud and hot. By hot, I mean 10-20 C higher than other brand drives. These days, you can get a 1 TB SATA2 drive with 16 MB cache for $100 or less.

Remember to backup important data often. CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are cheap, and a USB thumb drive or external hard drive is also handy for backing up important files. Hard drives are like light bulbs. They will eventually die and need to be replaced. Don't be caught off guard! And keep in mind that CDs, DVDs and even USB thumb drives can go bad over time. Make sure you back up all your important files often. For example, I keep all my family pictures on my wife's laptop and on my file server, plus I regularly back them up to an external hard drive, and I burn them to DVD at least twice a year.

For a new system or a relatively beefy older system (4GB RAM, at least a dual-core CPU), I recommend Windows 7. While Vista was noticably sluggish compared to XP, Windows 7 is noticably faster than XP for many things (like file operations, USB stuff, bootup and shutdown). While Vista was very quirky, especially with games, Windows 7 is nearly as solid as XP. The only exceptions are Battlefield 2 (you can't alt-tab without crashing), Age of Empires II (colors are messed up) and Midtown Madness II (very poor 3D performance, sound issues, no force feedback/rumble). So far, those are the only things I've seen weird with Windows 7. You also get DX11 with Windows 7, where XP is stuck at DX9. Windows 7 Home Premium is the one to get. Most people don't need the features in Windows 7 Ultimate, and Windows 7 Professional is geared toward business use. I highly recommend using the 64-bit version of Windows 7, if you have a CPU that can handle it. It will make the most of your computer hardware. For gaming, I find that 64-bit Windows runs games 10% faster than 32-bit Windows. I'm in the process of putting Windows 7 on all my PCs.

Keep in mind that when choosing between the 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows, the 64-bit one can't run 16-bit software at all, while the 32-bit version can still run 16-bit applications. For most people, this doesn't matter. In my case, I have some older kids games (like Reader Rabbit and JumpStart) that are 16-bit (made in the Windows 3.1 era), so I keep the 32-bit Windows on one of my spares for those games. For the rest of my systems, I prefer to run 64-bit Windows because it provides a 10% speed increase in games.

For older systems, I still recommend Windows XP with Service Pack 3. It has lower CPU and RAM requirements. It doesn't have DX10 or higher support, so your gaming is stuck at DX9 level, but there are few games out there that use DX10 in an appreciable way, and DX11 games are still in the future. There is little difference between Home and Professional versions of XP for personal use, so you are safe going with the Home edition to save some cash, unless you plan to use more than one physical CPU, which requires the Professional version. A Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading or a multi-core CPU like the AMD Phenom II X4 or Intel i7 is still considered a single physical CPU to XP, so you can safely use the Home version with those CPUs.

I whole-heartedly recommend against Vista. It has fewer quirks now than when it was released, but performance testing has shown Windows XP with Service Pack 3 running certain applications (like Microsoft Office) twice as fast as Vista with Service Pack 1 on the same hardware. Ouch. File operations in Vista are painfully slow, especially over a network. However, on a beefy enough system, gaming is now about the same between the two, as long as your game uses Direct3D and not OpenGL. In OpenGL games, your performance will drop 10-25% compared to XP on the same hardware!

Linux is also an option, but you will be limited in what games you can play. Only a few popular games have native Linux versions. Using Wine, Cedega or Crossover Games, you can run Windows games in Linux, but most of them will run slower, and many of them will have quirks. If you are really into gaming, you're pretty much stuck with Windows for now. Wine is getting better, but it will always be catching up to the latest Windows OS. I personally use Ubuntu Linux for my main PC at home. My wife also uses it on her laptop. But I have a separate PC for gaming, and it runs Windows 7.

WARNING: You should ALWAYS install Windows from a fresh install. NEVER install Windows as an upgrade! There are two reasons: The first reason is because the upgrade will often leave your system in a partially-broken state. The other reason, and probably the most important, is that if you upgrade to a new copy of Windows, the installer will flag your old Windows key as unusable, so you will never again be able to install the older version of Windows with the old key. If you buy an upgrade version of Windows, then you can't avoid this scenario.

LCD monitors have improved to the point that they are an option for gamers. They make LCDs with fast refresh speeds now, so you don't have the motion blurring issue as bad. You'll want an 8ms or lower refresh speed. Be sure that the refresh speed is the time it takes to go from totally black to totally white. Some manufacturers use the speed between two nearly-indiscernable shades of grey (usually shown as GTG, or grey-to-grey), which is bogus.

You want the LCD contrast ratio to be at least 1000:1 actual. Otherwise when you play dark maps in FPS games, you'll have a hard time seeing anything. Dynamic contrast causes the backlight to dim during dark scenes so the backlight isn't as noticeable. Without dynamic contrast, black areas in the image will still look dark grey because of the backlight. Dynamic contrast helps, but don't think for a second that a 20,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio can compare to a CRT or plasma screen, which have the equivalent of 5,000,000:1 contrast.

Keep in mind that an LCD is stuck at one native screen resolution. You can switch resolutions in games, but things get blurry since the graphics will be stretched or squished in order to fit the native resolution. If you buy a 1920x1200 LCD, you better make sure you have a graphics card that can run all your games well at 1920x1200. If you have to lower your resolution to play a game, you won't be happy with the blurry results.

LCDs can be fragile. If damaged, you will get dead pixels or stuck pixels which can't be fixed. Dead pixels stay black, while stuck pixels will always display a particular color (red, green, blue or some combination). Most LCDs can't be returned just because of dead or stuck pixels. Most stores have fine print that allows up to 10 or more dead or stuck pixels before they will accept the LCD as a return.

Keep in mind that widescreen support in games is spotty. Some newer games work OK, but older games are hit-and-miss, and usually require config file hacking, if they work at all. Even when they do work, the graphics are often stretched out. The Widescreen Gaming Forum is a great resource for making your games support widescreen.

The most important thing to keep in mind as a gamer, is that you should NOT use a wireless mouse. There is a ton of data going from the mouse to the computer all the time. A good mouse sends updates of the X and Y delta plus the state of all the buttons and scrollwheel 125 times per second. If any of that data gets lost or corrupted along the way, you will have erratic mouse movement. Keyboards and controllers don't transfer as much data, so it isn't as dangerous to use wireless, although you could still see some problems. And then there is the battery issue. Batteries in your wireless devices seem to die at the most inopportune times. Your best bet for reliable control is to stick with a wired keyboard, mouse and controller. I've seen many frustrated gamers fighting their wireless mice at our LAN parties and online game nights.

I highly recommend a USB optical mouse. USB mice have better refresh rates than PS/2 mice (125 updates per second vs. 40, which is too low for gaming). Optical mice don't have a mouse ball that requires constant cleaning. Laser mice currently don't offer better control than regular optical mice. In fact, they often perform much worse. Microsoft and Logitech both make excellent USB optical mice for under $20, such as the 400 DPI Logitech SBF-96 for about $15. I personally recommend Logitech, since I have had two of the aforementioned $20 Microsoft optical mice die for no apparent reason, but I have had great success with Logitech mice. I like the Logitech MX518. It has excellent resolution (1600 DPI, though I usually run it at 800 DPI) and extremely low error rates. It outperforms nearly all current optical mice, including laser. I definitely don't recommend a laser mouse at this time, and I again strongly recommend against a wireless mouse.

If you are looking for a game controller, for about $20 you can buy a PlayStation to USB adapter and use PlayStation 2 controllers. You can get these adapters at Radio Shack and Fry's. This is a great idea if you happen to already have some PS2 controllers around. If you don't, PS2 controllers are about $30 each, so this is an investment in better precision control. Make sure you get real Sony brand controllers, since the third-party controllers aren't nearly as reliable. As an alternative, you can get a nice PlayStation-style USB controller from Logitech for about $30. Don't bother with a cheap controller. It will only make you frustrated. Also, keep in mind that for racing, you will want an analog joystick. A digital controller is no better than using your keyboard for racing. But if you want to play other types of games, having both a digital and an analog control is nice. That's why I recommend Playstation-style controllers, because they have both digital and analog controls.

Case styles are very subjective things. Some people like them flashy. Others like them plain. Either way, you want a case that can keep the components cool inside, meet your needs, and be easy to work with.

For cooling, I prefer a case that has large fans. Larger fans move more air without as much noise. A case with a single 80mm fan in the back is not adequate these days. You'll want at least a 120mm fan in the back, and maybe one on top and one on the side. Then having one or two in the front can be handy. You generally want to pull cool air in from the front, and exhaust hot air out the back and top. The two front fans pull in cool air. The one on the side blows cool air directly on your graphics card or CPU, which are the biggest heat producers in your case.

Ideally, try to find fans that can be plugged into the fan headers on your motherboard, so the motherboard can control their speeds. Better motherboards can increase the fan speeds as your CPU gets hotter. If you are playing a game, you'll want your fans going full tilt. If you are watching a movie or checking e-mail, you might not want all the fan noise. Some fans have heat sensors built-in. These work OK, but the air inside your case is rarely hot enough to cause the fans to run full-speed, so it's kind of a waste.

Some cases have USB and FireWire ports, audio connectors, and even memory card slots on them. These should be chosen according to taste. Just make sure your motherboard has the appropriate headers on it for these connectors. Some motherboards don't.

For the audio connectors, make sure the case matches the capabilities of your motherboard. There are two styles of audio headers: AC97 and HD Audio. They are not interchangeable. If you have an AC97 motherboard, and your case only has the HD Audio connector, then you can't use it, and vice-versa. Most new cases and motherboards have switched to HD Audio, so if you are buying new stuff, you won't have any problems.

Most case components are made by pressing sheet metal, which can leave a razor-sharp edge. If these edges are not ground down, you will end up cutting your hands when you work inside the case. It has happened to me many times with cheap cases.

I recommend Antec cases. I've used them for years, and I've never been disappointed. They keep things cool inside, they are easy to work with, and they grind down their edges. They also tend to be fairly affordable. Often they are paired with Antec power supplies, which I also recommend.

When overclocking your CPU and/or graphics card, just like when upgrading, keep in mind that you won't notice anything less than a 20% increase in speed. You can usually see much greater performance boosts from upgrading your hardware instead of overclocking. I will overclock if I can safely get a 20% boost. If I can't get a 20% improvement, I don't bother. The increased wear and tear on your hardware isn't worth the unnoticeable performance improvement.

Some hardware seems to be made to overclock. For example, my E8500 starts off at a nice 3.166GHz, which already puts it ahead of nearly every triple and quad core CPU out there for single-threaded applications (like most games). But it overclocks easily to 3.8GHz on air cooling, and doesn't even get close to overheating. That's a 20% increase in speed with no penalty!

If you do decide to overclock, remember that heat is your biggest enemy. Look up the maximum safe temperature for your CPU or graphics card, and ALWAYS stay below it. Usually you want to keep your CPU below 60C. You will probably require an after-market CPU cooler to overclock well, but some CPUs can overclock well using the bundled cooler. Also, watch your voltages. Some motherboards increase their voltages automatically when you overclock. If your voltage gets too high, you can fry your equipment. Higher voltage equates directly to higher heat. Some CPUs can be overclocked without raising their voltage, or only raising it slightly. Overclocking is a time-consuming trial-and-error process, and the risk may not be worth the reward.

When overclocking, your memory timing is often the biggest hurdle. In general, you will want to start off by lowering your memory speed. For instance, if you have DDR2-800, you would lower it to DDR2-667 in the BIOS. Then you would manually set the memory timings to what they should be for DDR2-800, and not the lower/faster settings for DDR2-667 that it will choose automatically. Then you will increase your front-side bus (FSB) clock by 20%. For example, if it starts off at 133MHz, like with the Core 2 Duo E6600, you set it to 160MHz. This causes the RAM to run at DDR2-800 speed again. Then you will want to boot into Windows. If Windows crashes on bootup, then you will have to lower your FSB speed. If it doesn't, run an intensive program, such as Orthos or Prime95, which will peg all your CPU cores to 100% usage. Run a temperature monitoring program in the background like RealTemp. If you can run Orthos overnight without an error, and if your CPU stays under 60C, then you are good to go.

If your CPU gets hotter than 60C, you might be able to lower the temperature with a better CPU cooler. The CPU coolers that come with boxed CPUs tend to be just enough to keep the CPU at or just under 60C at full load without overclocking. You might also look into how cool it is inside your case. Generally, your ambient temperature inside your case should be no more than 10F higher than your room temperature. If it is hotter, you might need better fans, or maybe even a better case.

If you want to buy an AMD CPU, look out for the Black Edition. These let you easily overclock by increasing the multiplier. This is much easier than changing your front side bus speed, and doesn't have the nasty side effects. My Athlon X2 7750+ started at 2.7GHz with a 13.5x multiplier. I bumped up the multiplier to 14.5x for an easy and stable 2.9GHz without any further tweaking needed (although it was unstable at 15x, and at 15.5x it wouldn't boot). 200MHz doesn't make much of a difference for games, but since it is harmless, you might as well do it.

Some dual and triple-core AMD processors have four cores on them, but some of them are disabled. If you use a motherboard with ACC (Advanced Clock Calibration), you may be able to unlock those disabled cores. If you try this, make sure to run Orthos overnight to make sure you don't get any errors. The cores are usually disabled for a reason (like not passing quality control), so there is no guarantee that a disabled core will work correctly. You don't want to deal with random crashes just to get an extra CPU core.

Graphics card overclocking is generally not worth it. You might be able to overclock your card about 10%, but you won't notice the difference in games. If you want faster graphics, you need to buy a new card.

NewEgg is my favorite online store. It usually has the best prices and selection, and they ship fast. They also have customer reviews, so you can be sure you are buying a good product. I've never had any problems with NewEgg.

Fry's is great if you watch the ads. They will sometimes sell things for much less than you can buy them online. Be aware that a sale price on equipment at Fry's usually indicates it was used as a Fry's Rental (somebody buys the equipment, uses it for a LAN party, and returns it a couple of days later for a refund). This equipment is still quite good, but you will get a substantial discount on it. If you see a great deal in a Fry's ad, make sure you rush to Fry's early. They usually only have a few at that price, and they sell out quickly.

Beware of buying on eBay! More often than not these days, you see used computer equipment selling for higher than the original retail price! Be sure to check NewEgg or a price searching website before you put in a bid on eBay. Often I've seen NewEgg selling new equipment for way lower than the same used parts on eBay. On the other hand, sell your old equipment on eBay, because there are apparently a lot of ignorant eBay buyers out there. You'll recoup your computer costs in no time! ^_^

Benchmarking is handy to see how well tweaking and upgrades improve your system. I like to use 3DMark06 as a benchmarking tool. It is CPU-limited, so you can see how much your CPU affects your graphics card. You might see the SM2 and SM3 scores of your graphics card increase when you upgrade or overclock your CPU. However, if the graphics scores don't increase, then your CPU is not the bottleneck. It isn't very handy for comparing computers with different numbers of CPU cores. The CPU score is higher with additional cores, and that throws off the overall score, even if the graphics scores are the same. FutureMark has a newer test tool called 3DMark Vantage, but that requires Vista or Windows 7 because it tests DX10 performance. I still have 64-bit XP on most of my machines, and some of my cards don't support DX10 anyway, so for now I'm sticking with 3DMark06.

7-Zip has a nice CPU benchmarking utility that gives you a rating based on usage, which accounts for multiple cores. That way you can compare the single-threaded CPU performance of one system to the next. It also gives an overall performance rating, which can be used to compare how much your multiple cores make a difference for multi-threaded software (7-Zip is multithreaded, by the way).

If you just want to compare the performance of one graphics card to another, FurMark is a great tool. It isn't CPU-limited at all, in that the score for a particular graphics card will stay the same regardless of what CPU you have. You can also use FurMark to test overclock settings on your graphics card.

If you want to test CPU performance, Cinebench is a great choice. It runs single-threaded and multi-threaded tests, and it gives you an individual score for each. This is nice, because you can then compare how non-multi-threaded software will run on one machine compared to another. For example, if you are upgrading from a dual-core to a quad-core, you might think that it will automatically be faster. But the single-threaded performance could be much worse due to a lower clock speed. Ideally, you want to upgrade to a CPU that will be faster for both single and multi-threaded software. With this software, you can easily find out. Many web sites provide Cinebench scores when they review CPUs, so you can easily shop around for something better.

If you want to benchmark Nations at War on your system, install and run FRAPS, and then start NAW. Start a single-player game, and start the map called "A Bad Surprise". There is only one place to spawn as USMC. Start there, and head to the helipad. Walk to the back of the helicopter and turn all the way around. If a bot gets into the helicopter and starts to take off, then that's even better (it causes dust to fly around). If the helicopter is already gone, then you should wait until it respawns. This particular spot in the map is hard on your CPU and graphics card for whatever reason. If your frames per second stays at 60 FPS, then you have a fast enough CPU and graphics card for this game. If your frames per second drop below 60 frames per second, or if it is below 60 frames per second before you even get to the helicopter, then you should consider upgrading.

Counter-Strike:Source has a great benchmarking tool. You launch it from the game's main menu. It will perform a stress test on your system using your current settings. It's a great way to test out the results of changing various settings in the video options. For instance, you can see how 8x Anti-Aliasing compares to 4x. If you see a lot of stuttering while it is performing the test, then you will want to reduce your settings. The average FPS should be equal to your monitor's refresh rate, which is 60Hz for most LCDs.

When benchmarking, make sure you always keep the same settings on every system. For instance, in 3DMark06, I use the default settings. Also, you will want to disable vertical sync, or vsync, in your graphics card control panel. Vsync keeps the graphics synced to your monitor refresh rate, which prevents tearing. This is desirable most of the time, but if you are benchmarking, it will artificially lower your benchmark numbers. For example, with vsync on, the benchmarks won't go higher than 60FPS on a 60Hz LCD.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey results let you compare your system to what others out there have. Game makers will typically create games that run well on the majority of computers, so if your computer compares favorably with what is here, you can expect to play the latest games reasonably. If you have less than what is listed here, you probably should consider upgrading. The January 2010 survey showed the following:

• 88.53% of people have 2GB or more RAM, and that percentage is increasing. All games made since 2004 benefit from 2GB of RAM.
• 69.06% use Intel processors, and 30.94% use AMD. The speed of the processor can affect games, and Intel is currently the speed king.
• Only 18.08% still have a single-core processor, and that number is steadily decreasing. 56.93% have a dual-core. 23.99% have a quad-core. Expect more games to take advantage of multi-core processors in the near future, since they are in the increasing majority.
• 65.01% wisely use nVidia graphics cards. 29.82% are stuck with ATI. Follow the majority! They are right this time!
• 42.15% still use 32-bit XP, but that number is quickly decreasing. Vista usage is at 27.91% and decreasing. Windows 7 usage is at 28.53% and rapidly rising. 2/3rds of Windows 7 users have wisely chosen the 64-bit version.
• 48.94% now have a DX10-capable graphics card and are running Vista or Windows 7. Expect to see DX10 supported in games more in the future.

• You should run Windows Update to get the latest OS updates and driver updates for your system. Make sure you have installed the latest service pack.
• You should get the latest drivers for your graphics card from nVidia's or ATI's web site. Most modern games require the very latest graphics card drivers. It is also a good idea to upgrade your sound card drivers and motherboard drivers in your system, since newer drivers tend to have better performance and fewer quirks. The latest games often use new features that haven't been as well tested. The latest drivers will have fixes for issues found in the new games.
• Defragment your hard drive. You'd be surprised at how much quicker your games will load from a freshly defragged hard drive. You may also recover some wasted hard drive space in the process.
• Remove any unnecessary background programs. These will steal precious system resources from your game, or cause strange behavior. You can use msconfig (click on Start, choose Run, and enter msconfig) to enable or disable programs in your startup. You will have to experiment to discover which programs you can disable. Google is your friend. Google the filename of the program you see in msconfig, and you will get back web pages explaining what it is for, and whether or not it is safe to disable it.
• Remove any unnecessary background services. There are some excellent guides here that explain what services are needed. It's the best guide out there. Use the "SAFE" column.
• If you want to tweak XP further, there is a great guide here. Note that these tweaks are fairly advanced, and your mileage may vary. Most of these tweaks do very little to improve game performance.
• If you are really a hardcore tweaker and you want to mess with your BIOS settings, there is a great guide here. Messing with your BIOS settings is fairly dangerous. It's usually pretty safe to tell it to use the default optimal settings, though. Again, your mileage may vary.
• If you change your motherboard, you HAVE TO reinstall XP from scratch, unless you have an nForce-based motherboard. Windows has a number of motherboard-related drivers. If the motherboard hardware suddenly changes, you will get unpredictable behavior. It might boot, but you are playing with fire. At very least, make sure you uninstall all the drivers on your system before changing your motherboard.
• If you really want things running their best, you should install Windows from scratch at least a couple of times a year. That's the best fix for slow or strange computer behavior. If you call Microsoft support, they will tell you the same. Windows basically self-destructs over time.
• Be sure to run a full virus check before and after each LAN party. Make sure your virus checker has the latest virus definitions. This will ensure that you do not give a virus to anyone, and that you will not be affected by any virus you may acquire from the party. I check all of my install CDs, patches, cracks and servers for viruses, so you will not get a virus from me. I highly recommend the free AVG anti-virus system. It is what I use. Be advised that Symantec and Norton have been known to falsely flag no-CD cracks as viruses or trojans to appease game companies.
• I recommend using Mozilla Firefox for web surfing (install the AdblockPlus extension) and Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail. These will keep you from getting spyware and viruses in the first place. Thunderbird has an awesome Bayesian spam filter that works great. It also has the Lightning plug-in to add Outlook-like calendar capabilities, and the Provider for Google Calendar plug-in will keep Lightning and your Google Calendar synced up.
• For ultimate protection, I recommend using this constantly-updated host file that intercepts ad-related web junk and causes it to not load when browsing.
• Update your games with the latest patches. We always use the latest version of each game if possible. I always have the latest upgrade patches and no-CD cracks at the parties. I recommend MegaGames for cracks. It is a clean site (no porn), and the cracks are legitimate (no viruses or trojans). Look for the "PC Games" link under the "Game Fixes" section in the left menu.

• Laptops do not usually have upgradeable graphics. For a desktop, you'll want to upgrade your graphics card every two years or so to keep up with the latest games. It would get awfully expensive to buy a new laptop every two years. Of course, laptops tend to be very fragile, especially modern laptops made in China with ultra-cheap parts, so you might have a dead laptop in two years that needs to be replaced anyway.
• The graphics chips for laptops tend to be fairly low-end compared to the ones available for desktops. Avoid Intel graphics chipsets, because they are terrible for gaming.
• Beware of laptop graphics that use "shared memory". That means that it uses your system RAM, which is WAY slower than if it had dedicated (A.K.A. discrete) RAM for graphics.
• Laptops can overheat quickly, especially when your system is being pushed to the limits like most games tend to do. That can cause your laptop to shut down unexpectedly, and will reduce the life of the components in the laptop, especially the hard drive.
• Everything in a laptop is more expensive than a desktop. You can get a laptop designed for gaming starting around $1,500 (and averaging about $2,500). But you can put together two complete high-end desktop machines with much better game performance for that price.

Laptops are great for doing work without being tied down to a desktop, like word processing, e-mail, web surfing, and so on. If you really want a general-purpose laptop, I'd recommend one that has GeForce graphics with dedicated video RAM, 2 GB or more system RAM, and I'd recommend getting a separate desktop for games. If you want to play games on your laptop, do NOT get one with Intel graphics. Intel graphics won't play games very well at all. Most laptop graphics chipsets are equal to the GeForce 2 or 3 at best. Don't expect to play modern 3D games.

You can get a decent laptop for about $600 these days, but you won't play Counter-Strike:Source or any other newer game on it very well, if at all. It will likely play Condition Zero, Rise of Nations, and other older games. But it's not going to do well at a LAN party where we play the latest games. For example, I have a laptop with an Intel Core Duo T2300 (1.66GHz), 2GB RAM, and Intel GMA950 graphics. It is very choppy in Rise of Nations and Condition Zero. It can't play any Source-based game at all. It works fine for general-purpose computing, but it is lousy for games.

If you need a portable computer for general computing (Internet and productivity software), I highly recommend getting a netbook. They tend to sell for $200-$400. They have longer battery life than a regular laptop, and they tend to be more durable due to fewer moving parts, and due to the fact that they run cooler. You won't be able to play new games on one, but it will last a lot longer than a regular laptop.

The bottom line is, if you want to play modern games, you want a desktop.

1. Install the latest motherboard drivers.
2. Install the latest video card driver.
3. Install the latest audio driver.
4. Install the latest network driver. Turn on the firewall.
5. Disable 1394 networking if it exists.
6. Install the latest CPU driver if needed.
7. Remove any desktop background picture. (Saves RAM, improves desktop speed)
8. Turn off all visual effects except show shadows under menus, show shadows under mouse pointer, show translucent selection rectangle, show window contents while dragging, and smooth edges of screen fonts.
9. Set font smoothing to Normal for CRTs, ClearType for LCDs.
10. Turn off menu and tooltype transitions.
11. In Network Properties, turn off smooth scrolling. Set the IE home page to blank.
12. Set the page file initial and maximum size to the recommended value, or 1024 MB, whichever is smaller. (Reduces page file fragmentation, and some older games freak out if your page size is too large.)
13. Disable error reporting.
14. Turn off Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop.
15. Turn off Automatic Updates.
16. Turn off System Restore.
17. Turn off indexing on all hard drive partitions.
18. Disable all unnecessary services by following the "SAFE" column on Black Viper's web page.
19. Remove the following Windows Components: MSN Explorer, Networking Services, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger
20. Run Windows Update.
21. Install 7-Zip (free file archiver, superior to WinZip and WinRAR). Configure 7-Zip to handle all file compression types, and to add a decompress to folder option.
22. Install AVG Free (free anti-virus).
23. Install Audacity (free audio editor). Install the LADSPA Plugins.
24. Install BlueRazorLame (free, best MP3 compressor).
25. Install CCleaner (free tool for cleaning your hard drive and Windows Registry of useless items).
26. Install CDex (free CD ripper).
27. Install Combined Community Codec Pack (free video codecs and media player). Configure video codec to use auto post-processing and debanding. This comes with Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which is an outstanding alternative to Windows Media Player.
28. Install Daemon Tools Lite (free CD/DVD emulator, use ISO files like they are physical discs).
29. Install e-Sword (free Bible reader). I highly recommend the NET Bible (free, New English Translation, best translation of the Bible available).
30. Install FileZilla client (free GUI FTP program).
31. Install Foxit Reader (free PDF reader). WAY faster than Adobe Reader.
32. Install GIMP (free, powerful graphics editor).
33. Install HWInfo32 (free hardware information and diagnostics tool, similar to Lavalys Everest).
34. Install InfraRecorder (free CD/DVD burner software).
35. Install Mozilla Firefox (free web browser). Install the AdBlockPlus extension.
36. Install Mozilla Thunderbird (free e-mail). Install Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar plugins.
37. Install Notepad 2 (free enhanced text editor) in the Windows directory. Configure Windows to use Notepad 2 for text files. Pin Notepad 2 to the Start Menu, and add a shortcut to Notepad 2 in the Send To folder.
38. Install OpenOffice (free, fully-compatible alternative to Microsoft Office).
39. Install PageDefrag (free system file defragmenter for 32-bit XP). Set it to defragment at every boot.
40. Install PDFCreator (free, print PDF files from any application).
41. Install PuTTY and PSCP (free ssh and scp programs for Windows).
42. Install Recuva (free file recovery program for Windows).
43. Install QuickTime Alternative (free QuickTime without spyware/adware).
44. Install Real Alternative (free RealPlayer audio and video without spyware/adware).
45. Install Smart Defrag (an excellent freeware disk defragmenter).
46. Install WinAMP (free audio file player). For listening with headphones, install the Jammix Enhancer plugin. Configure WinAMP to use Jammix Enhancer. Set Jammix Enhancer to "My favourite" preset.
47. Defragment the hard drive with Smart Defrag.

Done! At this point, I start to install the games that I want to play.

You may notice that I use mostly free software. You might ask, why don't you just use Linux? My answer: I do! I started using Ubuntu Linux as my desktop OS when version 7.04 came out. It was the best choice I ever made. I only use Windows for games.

Another helpful tool that I don't always install, because I don't need it often, is nLite, which lets you create customized Windows install CDs. For instance, you can create a Windows XP install CD with Service Pack 3 already installed, and all your hardware drivers already installed. You can also include your CD key and other configuration options so it won't need to ask for any information during install, which speeds things up considerably. Plus you can do some handy performance tweaks to the default install, which will save you time later.

• Norton or Symantec software. These will bleed your system resources dry, and will make your modern, multi-core system feel like a 486. AVG Free is a much better anti-virus program, it won't eat your resources, and it's free.
• Adobe Reader. This is used for viewing PDF files. Adobe Reader installs a quick-loader program that stays resident in your system memory and slows down your boot times. It doesn't speed anything up. It's very slow to start, and it is very sluggish when viewing files. FoxIt Reader loads almost instantly, and it performs much faster when viewing PDF files.
• Windows Media Player. I don't want Microsoft collecting information about every song I listen to and every video I watch. For Windows, I use WinAMP for music and Media Player Classic Home Cinema for video.
• iTunes. I don't own an iPod, and I wouldn't purchase any product from the morally-bankrupt Apple. So I don't need it. Plus, iTunes installs all kinds of stuff that starts up at boot time and needlessly consumes your system resources. I only buy MP3 players that act like an external hard drive so I can copy my MP3s to them easily without software. I prefer to rip my own MP3s from CDs that I own, and do it at a MUCH higher quality than you can get from iTunes. I use BlueRazorLame to make my MP3s, and EasyTag to insert information into them. For ripping CDs, I use CDex, which can make the MP3s and fill out the MP3 tags all at the same time. When I make an MP3, I use the following lame options: -V3 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 18. These options use the highest quality compressor (which takes a little more time, but the sound quality is improved), and gives me a variable-bit-rate file that averages 192Kbps (the minimum I can stand), but can go up to 320Kbps as needed (which avoids the "swishy" sounds), or down to 32Kbps when it can to save space. It also reduces file size by throwing away any sound above 18KHz, which most sound equipment can't reproduce, and even if it did, most human ears can't hear. This gives me a reasonably-sized MP3 that sounds excellent, even when played loudly through a nice sound system, or through high-quality headphones. The quality is indistinguishable from lossless for most purposes. By the way, for archival purposes I use FLAC, which stands for Free Lossless Audio Compression. It compresses a WAV file to about half it's original size, and when decompressed, it is bit-for-bit identical to the original. By comparison, using my MP3 settings, the file is about 90% smaller than the WAV file, and sounds pretty much the same.
• Microsoft Office. I prefer the free OpenOffice, which does everything that Microsoft Office can do, and I use Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail. My wife uses Evolution on her Ubuntu laptop for e-mail. It is very much like Microsoft Outlook.
• Roxio CD or DVD software. Their software is slow and bloated. InfraRecorder is a great alternative. If you need a fancier DVD package, I've used Nero, and I liked it.
• I don't install QuickTime or RealMedia. They install spyware that loads at bootime and consumes resources. If I need to play a MOV or RM file (which is rare at best), I use QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative, and play them in Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

I had two spare computers with older equipment in them. I noticed that one of them, the Athlon XP 2700+ with a GeForce FX 5900XT was not performing very well in some games (especially Trackmania Nations). I was curious how it compared to the system with the Pentium 4 2.8 GHz and Radeon 9800. I had assumed that the Radeon 9800 was a lesser performer than the 5900XT, but after running 3DMark06 on both systems, I found that the 9800 was slightly faster than the 5900XT. I also found that the 2700+ was faster than the P4 2.8 GHz, but I knew that already. I decided to swap the video cards so the faster graphics card and CPU could be in the same machine. That was the beginning of my troubles.

I knew from prior experience that I should download the latest Radeon drivers before I swapped the cards, so I did that. Then I shut down the systems and swapped the cards. When the P4 system came up with the 5900XT, the ATI drivers crashed several times. Once I clicked through numerous error windows, I was finally able to uninstall the ATI drivers, which took a while. Once I rebooted, I installed the latest nVidia drivers, rebooted, and the system was complete. Once the ATI drivers were out of the way, it took about 3 minutes. This is as it should be. You should always uninstall hardware drivers BEFORE you replace the hardware, so the troubles I had here were technically my fault.

Then I went to the 2700+ system with the 9800. When it booted up, I was able to uninstall the nVidia drivers without a hitch. No crashes. It didn't even hiccup. Then I went to install the ATI drivers. When I started to find the drivers, I got a BSOD. That was weird. The XP install was fairly fresh, so I couldn't imagine what was wrong. The BSOD didn't give me any clues (it usually tells you the module that crashed). So I hard reset the computer, and it came back up. I got another BSOD. The only thing different here is the 9800. I thought that maybe there was some sort of BIOS issue, so I checked that out. I saw that I had the timings set to be optimal instead of normal. This overclocks the front-side bus to 334 instead of 333 MHz. So I switched it to normal. Then I rebooted. No BSOD. So the 9800 is extremely sensitive to timing on the bus. OK. I can live with that. But I lost half an hour figuring this out.

Then I installed the ATI drivers. It gave me an error. It said I needed to install .NET 2.0. I clicked OK, and expected it to stop installing, but it went ahead and installed, and then wanted to reboot. On reboot, I got several errors. I assume these were related to the lack of .NET 2.0. So I started up Windows Update and installed .NET 2.0, which took a long time. Then I rebooted. Same errors! So I reinstalled the ATI drivers and rebooted. Same errors! I then uninstalled the ATI drivers, rebooted, reinstalled the drivers, rebooted, and finally the errors went away, and I was able to use the ATI control panel. Yay! That only took 2 hours to install. Compare that to the 3 minutes it took to get the 5900XT running once I got past the ATI driver issues.

So then I decided to try 3DMark06 to see if all my efforts were worth it. 3DMark06 immediately crashed. It claimed it couldn't create the screen. I tried changing the screen mode from the default, but it was no good. I tried several other settings in 3DMark06, but nothing would fix the errors. Then I tried starting up Call of Duty. It started fine and displayed graphics. So I messed with 3DMark06 some more, rebooted a few times, messed with some BIOS settings, and checked that there wasn't anything weird with Windows. Everything checked out. So I uninstalled the ATI drivers and reinstalled. No luck. Same problems. I started Flat Out 2, and got an error that it couldn't open the screen. Then, after an hour of investigation, it dawned on me that OpenGL is working (Call of Duty uses the Quake 3 engine, which is OpenGL), where Flat Out 2 uses Direct3D, as does 3DMark06. So I started dxdiag. Sure enough, it had errors for D3D7, D3D8 and D3D9. So I started messing with more stuff. I tried reseating the card, tweaking Windows some more, uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, and even reinstalled XP from scratch, but no luck. One time I uninstalled the drivers, and when Windows came up, I let it try to download the drivers over Windows Update. It installed some 4 year old drivers, but much to my surprise, I found that dxdiag ran successfully! 3DMark06 was still having issues, probably because of the age of the drivers. After 3 more hours of experimenting, I finally found the culprit, so I decided to try different drivers.

I went to ATI's web site again, and found a link at the bottom for older drivers. They were all separate install modules, instead of being a single install program like the latest driver. I grabbed the three main files from the previous version of the driver. I installed them. Each one required an individual reboot (ouch). But once I got all three installed, I ran dxdiag successfully, and then ran 3DMark06 successfully. Yay! I finally had my Radeon 9800 working in my Athlon XP 2700+ system! And it only took 6.5 hours to do! Again, compare that to the 3 minutes it took me to install the nVidia card.

So you see, I have very good reasons for not recommending ATI cards. Can you imagine someone less experienced than me trying to go through all of the above? It probably wouldn't happen. You'd probably spend hours on the phone, long distance to ATI in Canada, to figure out the problem, like I did when I tried to get my All In Wonder Radeon to work a few years ago. After two hours and a hefty long distance bill, I was told to use Intel CPUs instead of AMD. They claimed that ATI doesn't support AMD processors! Considering their dislike for AMD processors, it's rather ironic that AMD purchased ATI, isn't it?

Update: I have learned since going through all of this effort that ATI dropped support of AGP Radeon cards after the release of their Catalyst 7.6 drivers. They are well aware of the problems with AGP cards, but are not interested in fixing the issues. So if you want to play the latest games, your best bet is to upgrade to a GeForce video card. Honestly, that's always been the best choice.

Update (1/31/08): ATI has finally done something about this. Although the Catalyst driver still doesn't support AGP as-is, starting with Catalyst 8.1 they have a hot fix. This is good, since you will need at least 8.1 in order to play Enemy Territory:Quake Wars. Sadly, I found no link to this hot fix on their web site. You have to Google for it, or else dig through ATI's support forums. Shameful! Once you get to the hot fix page, it will claim that it is only for the X series AGP cards, but I found that it worked fine on my 9800 Pro. Get your act together, ATI!

Update (2/14/08): It was a fluke. ATI only created the hotfix for 8.1. Later versions don't have the hotfix available. So AGP users are stuck at 8.1 now. And good luck finding the 8.1 hotfix. It's even harder to find now!

Update (9/15/08): If you are stuck with an AGP ATI card (you have my deepest condolences), do yourself a favor and use the Omega Drivers. These are special drivers that are hacked to perform better, support OpenGL and Direct3D games on AGP Radeon cards, and they eliminate the need to install .NET by providing a much snappier and overall more useful configuration utility.

Update (12/9/08): A year and a half later, ATI seems to have fixed their little AGP issue. Apparently Catalyst 8.11 works with AGP Radeon cards (at least my X700 and 9800 Pro in 64-bit XP). But I'm sticking with Omega Drivers anyway.

Update (1/5/2009): I was wrong. Catalyst 8.11 and 8.12 do NOT support all AGP Radeon cards (HD3850 in particular). But you can still Google for the latest AGP hotfix (they have one for 8.12 now), so at least you can find a workaround like before.

Update (10/28/2009): ATI just announced that if your card doesn't do at least DX10, they no longer support it. Nice. That includes many PCIe cards, and all AGP cards.