After a long and illustrious career, it appears that my X1900XT is finally ready to buy the farm. Even when underclocked and undervolted my card is getting a dead pixel effect on my desktop (they're not actual dead pixels, since I can mouse over them or put a window over them and the effect disappears), and I'm experiencing a lot of texture issues in Team Fortress 2 and the Left 4 Dead demo, as well has having random crashes in Darwinia and Sins of a Solar Empire.

So with all that in mind, it's time to buy a new graphics card (arguably past time in some respects), and while I did have my sights set on a GTX 260 Core 216 or a 1GB HD4870, I've decided to go for a more moderate upgrade, and then make a bigger jump in a year or so. I was initially considering a 9600GT, but since availability on those isn't so great (especially from the best board partners, EVGA, XFX, and BFG) and the prices on the 9800GT are ridiculously low, I've decided to go for one of those instead.

I also considered an HD4830, but the excellence of Nvidia's board partners has swayed me into sticking with the 9800GT. With XFX I get Call of Duty 4 (which I did plan on buying myself anyway, so there's $40 or so saved), a double-lifetime warranty that I can carry over to the next person I sell this card to (great for resale value), as well as warranty support for overclocking and adding my own aftermarket cooler (both of which will undoubtedly be done to this card). XFX also has a very nice-looking card layout, as well as spinal support for the card that should help alleviate PCB flexing when I install a heavier aftermarket cooler.


With all this in mind, I'm also looking into a headset - no voice chat can get me by in Team Fortress 2, but in Left 4 Dead it's an absolute must. I'm not looking for anything super-high quality here, as I already have a set of high quality headphones, so I opted for the Plantronics Gamecom 367. I opted for these over the 377 because they're of a closed-ear design, and I'm going to have to drown out some exterior noise (TV, wife making requests for me to take out the trash, etc.).

Other minor upgrades are put on hold for right now, since between this, my alternator going out, and my wife's birthday along with the coming holiday season and our anniversary shortly thereafter is going to leave me stretched a bit thin. Rest assured I will be getting the rest of those upgrades in my poll as money permits, most likely starting with the RAM and hard drive.

So farewell my venerable X1900XT. It served me well through some very punishing conditions, and did far better than I would have expected it to after the G80 launch.