Recently I did some computer upgrades. First of all, I had a 22″ & 19″ monitor, but I decided since I’m getting an HD5850 I might as well go for 1920×1200 resolution. So that’s what I did. I now have a 24″ LG and 22″ V7 monitor. If you’re wondering, yes there is a large difference from 1680×1050 and 1920×1200. More screen space generally always means more productivity, and with 2 monitors you have even more space. The next major thing I did was buy a 2TB Hitachi drive, I would have gotten a smaller drive, but the price was right since it runs at 7200rpm. I won’t go lower than that on a hard drive. Next I installed Windows 7 on the 2TB drive.
At first, I thought the HD5850 was going to be bottlenecked by my Q6600, after some in game testing, this doesn’t seem to be the case at all. I’m able to run Crysis at the max settings at 1920×1200, and have very playable frame rates. I tested a few other games and the result was just awesome. I probably got more than 2x the performance of my older card, the HD4850 which I bought when it came out. I don’t plan on upgrading the motherboard/cpu until the next gen cards arrive, such as the HD6850 or something, I’m sure by that point the Q6600 will just be too slow to keep up so a full system upgrade is in store around that time 
If you’re debating about the HD5870 or the HD5850, 10 – 15% more performance just isn’t worth the extra cost in my opinion, just go with the 5850. Right now, it has the best price/performance ratio out there. I didn’t get all into the benchmarks and stuff yet, I might never get to it this time. Usually I always do when I get a new card and go quite insane with overclocking. I guess I’d rather just game than play with the benchmarks
Oh yea, almost forgot.. I’m extremely impressed with Windows 7, it runs great. I’m always on the computer for work or entertainment so having a good setup is pretty important to me. Below is a pic of my current desktop
New chips are out, but it doesn’t seem like pc enthusiasts are paying much attention, including me. Why? Well, prices are too high right now. Also, I just built this PC what, about a half year ago, I don’t think I’m ready for an upgrade quite yet. Most people are sticking with their Core 2 Duos or Core 2 Quads, since with those overclocked, there’s not much of a difference between the i7 at stock. Of course, the i7 should be able to overclock further, but who needs that kind of speed right now anyway. Last time I checked, my Q6600@3.2GHz was not having any trouble with current games. I rarely even see my processor go more than 50% use, except when I’m encoding video, where it goes to 80%. Booting up windows etc only puts my processor at about 5-10% use. I see no reason, wouldn’t even use the power. That’s why I don’t think there’s a big fuss over the Core i7’s in comparison to all the fuss made over the Conroe architecture when that came out. GPU’s are behind processors nowadays so no one sees a need.