Alright so I got me a new video card (ATI Radeon X1550 256 MB), and as a surprising bonus, I also got a new 17" LG LCD monitor. The only thing I'm lacking right now to be completely satisfied is another 1 GB RAM, which I'll get with my own money sometime soon-ish.

So I'm really happy with my new PC. After a lot of set-up and configuration issues (like fixing jumpers on the motherboard and stuff), I got to test my new video card and LCD monitor with the only graphics-heavy game I have on the PC right now, Granado Espada. Oh man the game is even more beautiful with all the graphical features turned on! D:

I'm grinding slowly because I don't really want to spend all day playing the game. That, and I don't want to leave Micko and Francis' levels too far behind. But I am pretty excited to get my Elementalist to level 30, so I can use the 2nd tier of stances for stronger magic and stuff. Meanwhile I dunno what to do with my fighter. ~_~ Not sure what stance I like, until I get the sword + gun stance and/or the rapier stance.

Goodbye, old PC. After 5 and a half years of faithful service, my Pentium IV, 1.6 GHz machine finally died on me. That's why after it stopped functioning suddenly and wouldn't start anymore last night (Tuesday night), I couldn't even complain or get angry. But I felt a little sad because I'd be saying good bye to an old friend.

With that, however, and with many thanks to God, I bought a new PC. It's got a clean white casing with the following specs:

Genuine Intel Pentium IV 3.0 GHz
ASUS P5GZ-MX motherboard
512 MB DDR2 RAM
On-board Gb LAN
DVD Writer
Seagate 80 GB SATA HDD

Unfortunately, I neglected to check the motherboard due to my ignorance. So my current, still-working 512 MB DDR RAM won't work on my new motherboard, and neither will my GeForce 4. FORTUNATELY, I've been given permission to buy those items tomorrow (Thursday).

It's not a dream machine, I know, but it's well above the average machine, and more than enough to run most games today. I'm especially happy about the cooling system the casing has, but it's not really special. Just that, compared to my old machine, this one seems like it's not going to overheat at all (compared to my old machine where none of the fans work properly).

I can actually already feel the effects of the 3.0 GHz processor.

Another "unfortunately": a new motherboard means a reformatted HD. So I'm down to scratch again, however my old HDs are still here. I'm just copying the stuff that I can, like my anime and bboy videos, mp3s, images, and some bigass installers that I don't feel like redownloading, such as Granado Espada.

Anyway, thanks for all the help thus far, old PC, which I'd never named. Come to think of it, I should name my new PC. From now on, I'll call it Larry.