(Second Life spanned across 3200×1200 sure does look epic!)

I've got a new computer. You may recall the last time I wrote at length about a a system I got. My new rig has a Q6600 processor, 8800GTS (640MB) graphics card, and 4 GB of RAM — altho all of it isn't accessible due to 32-bit limitations.

This came sooner than I expected, and was a surprise, in a way. I was thinking of holding off, but with my job so dependent on the tech I got, I foresaw that it was worth shelling out some bucks now so I could have a smoother ride down the road.

Migration was pretty straightforward, and took me about a couple days, altho the challenging part was juggling it with my Linden Lab duties, while at the same time hoping that Second Life would run well, and indeed it does. I see and feel a marked average improvement of 10-20 FPS in various areas, and that's with anisotropic filtering and antialiasing both set to 16x. Yes, I am a smoothness junkie! Experiential testing shall continue.

I know Residents often wonder what kind of computers Lindens use, and for obvious reasons like Quality Assurance testing, we use many. I also have to thank some of our graphical gurus like Runitai Linden for their advice in recommending I go for the higher-capacity 8800GTS, instead of the 320MB one. Especially since I run dual Samsung 204B monitors @ 1600×1200 and SL sure loves gobbling up texture memory.

A few weeks ago, I joked that Second Life, Photoshop, and Firefox were all fighting for RAM supremacy, so that's where my 4 GB — 3.25 GB showing as accessible — comes very useful.

Why'd I opt for quad-core? While Second Life isn't fully multithreaded yet, some things like texture decoding (Client menu > Rendering > Run Multiple Threads) are heading towards that direction, and because this gives me more power to run multiple accounts at the same time for testing. I also run a number of apps that are heavily quad-core dependent, like Filter Forge (Photoshop filter suite) and Sony Vegas (video editing). And at the brisk pace I use a computer, I tend to love my machine for doing multitasking well, with many programs open, so it makes sense. Plus, after the big July 22 price drop, I couldn't resist.

These main parts are on an Asus P5K motherboard; I didn't go for the Deluxe version because I didn't need the wi-fi and extra ports. That saved me about Cdn$100.

Other niceties include dual hard drives: a regular 250GB Western Digital, and then a 150GB Raptor model (advertising screams "10,000 RPM"!), which did the bulk install of Windows XP in 10 minutes. While not as fast overall as I'd wished for, I have lofty expectations, and it was worth the somewhat exorbitant price, especially with the many weighty files I work with. Second Life loads in 5-10 seconds. I already have two external 250GB hard drives for further data backup, and I burn DVDs a lot (and watching the price of Blu-Ray drives come down).

I'm not big into modding or overclocking, but I had the stock fan replaced with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro should I want to engage in future experiments. I also had an extra PCI card with 4 USB slots installed, 'cuz I gotta have peripherals: speaking of which, I also got a Saitek R440 racing wheel + pedals and P2600 gamepad. The uses for these, if you've been following my blog for awhile, are obvious.

I also opted for an internal flash memory reader with various card slots, and aha, another USB port. (Can't get enough of those, really.) Floppy drives are so passe! My other storage unit is a Pioneer DVD-RW.

Things are running well so far, but I'll give it time. Shaving off blocks of a few seconds or minutes sure add up, and it's not that my older main computer, the Opteron 170, is no longer useful, but my demands have increased. The Opty makes a fine secondary rig, with my even older Pentium 4 relegated to being disconnected for the time being, until I might get another monitor for it if I figure I can farm stuff out (like panorama processing, gosh, Smartblend eats CPUs alive!).

Throughout all of this, I have to say I'm most impressed with

, the online store I purchased my computer from. I selected the parts in my cart, then requested them to be assembled into a system. Basic assembly and testing is $25, but mine was increased to $50 because of my desire to swap the graphics card from a 320MB to 640MB mid-way — which, much to their credit, still saved me money (versus a 15% restocking fee).

This is the third computer I've ordered from NCIX, and each time, I've been extremely pleased with their service. I have this mini-obsession with browsing their site for special deals, and after they recently held a re-opening, I noticed so many pieces clicked together: the aforementioned Q6600 price drop, the deal of getting free ground shipping on an entire order with my selected case (Antec Sonata III), decent mail-in rebates on the graphics card and RAM, and ohhhh hey price-matching!

I have a passion for a good deal, and I headed over to DirectCanada (which apparently is a sister site of NCIX's?) and found that intriguingly enough, it had numerous of the same components for cheaper. How could I resist? I couldn't! Tallying up all those savings, I figured,

"Hey Torley, you've gone too far, let's order this system and have a more enjoyable work + play computing experience."

Kudos also to the helpful customer service reps I talked with on the phone, email, and live chat, particularly Michael, who was really gentle, friendly, and helped update me on the status of my order. It took about 4 days (including long weekend Monday) from the time I ordered it to start being built, and even the free ground shipping was fast… literally overnight. Prob with me living in the woods is they don't deliver packages out here (unless it's FedEx for some reason), so I had to drive into town. But well worth it.

I'll also give high praise to NCIX for their meticulous packing. I admittedly haven't opened the case up, but they have a reputation for tying cables together and really making the insides pretty. They left all applicable original boxes and packaging inside a really big cardboard box (which I encourage shelling out the Cdn$6 for — legends are true, you can live inside it), and in most cases, even left the plastic wrap on, merely with neat cuts where they had to take out a part to put it in my tower.

Lots of Airplus Excel cushioning, too.

It was a bit of a surreal yet pleasant sight to open my almost-virgin Sonata III packaging, to find all the complete system in there. It was like, freakin' psychic surgery! But real pros, the NCIX assembly team made it work. Very, very neat, esp. for assembling disparate parts (as opposed to a pre-built system under a single company's banner). They do make an attempt at branding, tho, by affixing an embossed "NCIX" logo onto the case door. It looks pretty, but I have no use for a swinging door, so I unscrewed and removed it.

Only one obvious snag I'm waiting for them to get back to me on: I ordered a cheap clip-on mic (because my old headset one's buggin' me!), and this appears to have been left out of the order. I checked all the boxes and it's nowhere to be found, so I'm expecting an email back from the shipping supervisor. Mistakes like this are easy to tolerate when so much else goes well.

I admit I was anxious because it had been a year-and-a-half-something since the last time I ordered from them, but their business has grown, and true to their proverb, NCIX has great technology, selection, and service. If you're a Canadian like me and looking for a fine place to order parts or a whole system from, check 'em out. (They also have a US section but I've no experience with that.) Just take my advice to check out their specials, always — subscribe to their email newsletter so you don't miss out, and be assertive about price-matching too, because my experiences have been incredibly smooth, and saving some $$$ upfront makes you want to spend even more in the long run. My bro's thinking of getting a new system from them as well.

Total cost of my new computer sans external peripherals, with 3% "Shipping Insurance with 30 Days Express RMA", before mail-in rebates were discounted, not including taxes, and with the cardboard box? Cdn$1671.57.

I believe it's a fine price for a upper-midrange system, and I love that powerful technology keeps getting cheaper.

I view computers like bodies, so consider me having done a brain transplant of sorts. As long as I can transfer my data to comfortable new environments in this increasingly-portable world, I'm good to go. It feels weird but good to look at the same quality LCD panels I have but know that what's powering it is significantly more powerful. And maybe down the road, I'll indulge in an obnoxiously large widescreen.

Until then — the next few weeks, months will pan things out. I hope this has given you some insight into why I made the choices I did when it came to acquiring a new computer. Yayzerama!