" Intel will be releasing the six core processor fairly soon.  Possibly doing a build would be interesting"
  I'd like to clarify that, Since I have the 950 which is more than I would have put into a build I'm not thinking of building a 980.  Wouldn't mind having a P4 with Xp for haptek.
  NVidia has graphics cards with the physics rendering.
Carl2

I have a dual boot for XP, and I also have virtual XP in Win7 but it's not really that good at graphics applications.

Does come in handy now and again.

ATI say their cards do support physics rendering, I know my HD4890 does, its something ive wondered about Nvidia and Ati seem to have their own system or something, needs more looking in to.

Ive got a couple of games that require NVIDIA PhysX engine to be installed in order to run, even though I don't have an NVIDIA card. Don't know if maybe that would help.

  I've just switched to the faster computer which has the NVIDIA 285 video card, I visited the NVIDIA website to download their application in the control panel. It is much better than the one that came with the computer. The 285 video card is one step lower than the card that has the physics. I believe they are fairly highly priced. I had noticed that they have SLI and crossfire, I think that one is for NVIDIA and one is for ATI.
  I have just tried using the Haptek player in this computer because of a problem I was having with jiggly in the other computer. I do not have the problem with jiggly in this computer and I am certain it is because of the video card.
  I have fairly poor graphics in quake four, it almost seems like a waste of a video card. It does seem that applications start quicker in this computer, I would say that Dragon loaded in approximately one half the time.
Carl 2

Not sure if this will work for everyone but I have made a link that searches Dabs for Intel SSD drives.

http://www.dabs.com/category/components-and-storage,hard-drives/11026?q=intel%20ssd%20drive

  Just tried the link which works okay,  the prices are britishish, plus shipping would be further for me.
Carl2

  Just found out this computer, the Asus which has an Nvidia G 100, has physX, just disabled the acceleration and the problem with Hapteks Jiggly went away.
Carl2

Gone a bit too off topic

Start a jiggly one?

  Yes off topic, Jiggly is under software.  I'm still checking the SSD's at newegg, Plexor which earned one of the best names for CD and DVD players and burners has entered the SSD market.  Like to see the reviews after they sell some, Not selling the Sata 3 version yet.
Carl2

The 500GB SSDs are here

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190530

a snip at £1100

So the SSD's are getting to a sensible size now just not a sensible price.

On the pluss side I see they are giving away free delivery on it LOL.

  Just checked it out at newegg for US money,  You buy computers for that price.  I'm lucky because I don't use much space, ran 2 80 Gb in raid 0 for ages and never came close to filling them.   I'm still looking at the prices which seem to be holding steady, small ups and downs with sales.
Carl2

I thought I would have a quick look at where we stand with SSD drives today, they are still expensive compared to HDD but I think its becoming feasible.

Really it would be good to have one for Windows, programs and games, all my work and documents could quite happily still live on the external HDD.

So at a push, if I am selective with which games I have installed I reckon a 120GB drive would just about do it. 

If you go for a mid speed SSD, without spending too much but still a heck of a lot faster than HDD you could be looking at something like £150.

Hmmm 

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/236497

All the dodgy SSDs have been engineered out so all makes are pretty much of a muchness these days.

Don't get too hooked into the MB/s times as they're all far faster then HDDs.

The difference between a 120GB and a 128GB is how much is left spare for caching. They're both 128GB in reality. There are still some latency problems once all the memory locations are used but again they're still way faster then HDDs. I would go for OCZ or Intel but that's my preference.

Have found this product that I've not seen before.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/222310

It's a 500GB HDD with 4GB SSD hybrid. I have no idea how they perform.

Everyone noticed that SSD's are coming up for slightly over a £1 a GB lately ?

I was thinking only today that now could be a time to take the plunge and get an SSD.

Yes I noticed