FittsWorld's Computer Page
A page devoted to personal computer hardware and applications

This page exists for the sole purpose of providing links to my favorite computer information and website design sources, and a complete description of the hardware in my own local area network.

Computer News & Discussion Topics

Graphics upgrade - September 2004
I wanted a flat panel monitor with my XPS last year, but I was not satisfied with the quality of the existing models for gaming so I decided to wait a while.  The new Dell 2001FP, a 20" flat panel with 16ms response time, got my attention and I was able to combine a couple of coupon offers in August to get a great deal on this monitor at nearly 30% off.

The 2001FP has a native resolution of 1600x1200, and I soon realized that my ATI 9800 Pro would not handle that setting on the latest games (such as Doom 3 and City of Heroes).  So, in order to keep my XPS at the cutting edge of gaming, I chose the ATI X800XT Platinum Edition graphics card to drive the new monitor.  It was hard to find the card, but my patience paid off as I was able to get it from Best Buy at 10% off.  I picked the X800XTPE over the NVIDIA 6800GT Ultra because I preferred the ATI's lower power requirements and slim one-slot profile.

The combination of these two upgrades has made a huge improvement in my gaming experience.  The 20" display is very crisp in digital mode, and the image quality is excellent.  The graphics card allows me to run at 1600x1200 on all games with both AA and AF enabled.  My 3DMark03 score doubled to over 12,000 with this upgrade, and is up there with the latest gaming machines.  The trusty 9800 Pro is being held in reserve to upgrade the Dimension 8200 later this year.

Dell Dimension XPS
purchased October 2003 - my gaming rig

Intel Pentium 4 ® 3.0GHz Processor with Hyper-Threading
Intel i875P chipset w/ 800MHz System Bus
1024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz
ATI X800XT Platinum Edition 256mb AGP Graphics Card
Dell 2001FP 20" Flat Panel Monitor
Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drive
LITE-ON DVD-ROM Drive
Samsung 48X CD-R/RW Drive
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 Sound Card
Klipsch ProMedia 4.1 400 Watt THX Speakers (4 w/sub)
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
Microsoft Windows XP Home SP2
3DMark03 score = 12153

Network Hardware:
LinkSys Wireless-G Broadband Router
LinkSys Wireless-G 54mbps PCI cards

Dell Dimension 8200
purchased November 2001 - Eric's PC game machine

Intel Pentium 4 ® 1.8GHz Processor
Intel 850 chipset w/ 400MHz System Bus
512MB PC-800 RDRAM
NVIDIA (OEM) GeForce 3 64MB AGP Graphics Card
Dell P991 19" FD Trinitron Monitor
Western Digital 60GB 7200RPM ATA-100 Hard Drive
Samsung 48X CD-ROM Drive
Iomega 250MB IDE Internal ZIP Drive
Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value Sound Card
Harmon-Kardon HK-100 Speakers w/sub
Conextant v.90 56k Modem (idle)
Dell Optical Mouse
Microsoft Windows XP Home SP2

(Images courtesy of Dell Computer Corp.)

Gateway GP7-500
purchased September 1999 - currently idle

Intel Pentium III ® 500MHz Processor
Intel 440BX chipset w/ 100MHz System Bus
256MB 100MHz SDRAM
PNY GeForce4 MX440 64MB 2X-AGP Graphics Card
Quantum Fireball 13.6GB 7200RPM ATA-66 Hard Drive
Promise Ultra-66 ATA-66 Controller
Sony 52X CD-ROM Drive
Iomega 100MB IDE Internal ZIP Drive
Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value Sound Card
3Com U.S. Robotics v.90 56k Fax Modem
MS Intellimouse
Microsoft Windows 98SE

Please link to FittsWorld using this official logo button.

Thanks for visiting FittsWorld!  Please come again soon.

Baldur's Gate is © BioWare Corp.  Diablo & DiabloII are © Blizzard Entertainment.  All original content and HTML code in FittsWorld is copyright © 1997-2004 Ken Fitts.  No materials from this site may be used or reproduced in any form without the written permission of the webmaster.