A Bit Humbling, Actually...
 

Having a working wife in a job she loves with reasonably good compensation has helped to take me from delivering pizzas to make ends meet a bit less than a year ago to having gotten a new computer yesterday...

Model: HP m7167c-b
Intel® Pentium® D Processor 820 with 2 Processing Cores
2.8GHz
1GB PC2-3200 DDR2 SDRAM
300GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive
DVD-ROM drive 16x max. speed
19" LCD flat panel monitor w/integrated speakers
TV Tuner (NTSC) with Personal video recorder and FM tuner (antenna included)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005

Processor and Memory: Intel® Pentium® D Processor 820 with 2 processing cores Processor Speed 2.8GHz L2 Cache: x 1MB 800MHZ Front-Side Bus
1GB PC2-3200 DDR2 SDRAM memory (2x512MB for ultimate performance --expandable to 4GB)
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with up to 224MB shared video memory

Hard Drive: 300GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive
DVD-ROM drive 16x max. speed
LightScribe Double Layer 16X DVD±R/RW drive with CD writer capabilities: 16x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD±RW, 2.4x DVD+R DL, 16x DVD-ROM, 40x CDR, 24x CDRW, 40x CD-ROM

Audio, Video, and Graphics: Intel® High Definition Audio with up to 7.1 surround sound capabilities
TV Tuner (NTSC) with personal video recorder and FM tuner (antenna included)
HP Media Center remote control with IR (infrared) receiver

Data, Fax, and Modem: Integrated 10/100Base-T network interface
56K fax modem

Ports: Front panel 9-in-1 memory card reader – supports Smart Media, xD, MultiMedia Card, Secure Digital (SD), Compact Flash I, Compact Flash II, Micro Drive, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro
HP Personal Media Drive Bay (available)
6 USB 2.0 ports (2 front, 4 back)
2 FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports (1 front, 1 back)
1 parallel, 2 PS/2 ports (back)
Microphone/headphone/line-in (front)
Composite Video, S-Video, and Audio Inputs (front)
Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor:
HP wireless optical mouse and wireless keyboard with extended range (up to 16')
HP vs19 19" LCD flat panel monitor with integrated speakers
Remote Control
IR receiver
TV tuner w/video recorder, FM tuner w/antenna

Now...what are the killer apps for such a machine? And what are the must-have games this year? I've been running on a dogass five year old PIII for so long that I haven't paid much attention to new stuff because I couldn't run most of it.

Halflife 2 is good. It's best and easiest to buy it online, since you have to register for Steam anyway, and online you have the option to get extra stuff, should you want to.

DOOM 3 is pretty, but sorta repetitive.

I'd recommend Tetris. Frogger is nice too. Perhaps Q*Bert, but only if you've had a recent physical and your life insurance is paid up.


But seriously, I don't know anything about games. But knowing your other interests you might check these out. They're not perfect due to bleed-through of high-contrast images, but it's still cool. (You'll need to check graphics compatibility. Nvidia has the best support for these things, but I'm fairy sure it's possible to use them with others.)

For a quick check on what's good, I like this site.

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

Google Earth, if you like geography, maps, etc.

The Intel graphics adapter will probably keep you from playing the high-end games graphic wise.

It's crap.

Sorry

A few examples:

Everquest II
* nVidia
o GeForce3 Series
o GeForce4 Series*
o Quadro4 700/750/900
o Quadro FX Series
o GeForce FX Series
o GeForce PCX Series
o GeForce 6xxx Series
o GeForce 7xxx Series
+ Win2k/XP Driver location and version - 77.72
+ Win98/ME Driver location and version – 77.72
* ATi
o Radeon 8500 Series
o Radeon 9xxx Series
o Radeon x300/x600/x700/x800
+ Win2k/XP Driver location and version –6.14.10.6553
+ Win98/ME Driver location and version –4.14.01.9150
* S3
o DeltaChrome S4/S8/F1 – Win2k/XP Driver location and version - 6.14.10.1996
* XGI
o Volari Series
+ Win2k/XP Driver version 1.09.52 WHQL
+ Win98/ME Driver version 1.09.52 WHQL

Star Wars Galaxies
ATI Radeon 7200/7500
ATI Radeon 8500 Series*
ATI Radeon 9xxx/x300/x600/x700/x800*
Matrox Parhelia**
GeForce 2/3/4/FX/6/7xxx Series*

Eve Online
The following graphic cards are not supported by EVE:
ATI Radeon VE
ATI Radeon U1
ATI Radeon 7000
Diamond Viper II Z200
Hercules 3D Prophet 4500
Intel Extreme Graphics
Onboard Intel chips, such as the Intel740, the Express 3D Graphics Card, and the 82830M/82815/82810/82845G/82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controllers
Voodoo 3 3000
Voodoo 5 5500
Voodoo4 4500
Riva TNT/TNT2
Matrox Millenium - G400 & G450
S3 Graphics ProSavageDDR
SiS® 650/740 Graphics Controller

I have a geforce ti4200 that someone could buy from me cheap if they wanted to play those kinds of things.

Grand Theft Auto: Pizza Delivery Holdup edition

1) How much?
2) How do I run dual adaptors so that I can use all of the groovy multimedia stuff this machine does?

Most (all?) motherboards only have one AGP slot, so you can only have one AGP card at a time. The other video card has to be pci. And there's some other setup issues. Google will tell you more.

In the immortal words of xoB:I agree with TS that the embedded video is the weak link in the system.

I run a geforce 4 ti4400 128mb. I did have a kick ass Radeon but it died a month out of warranty about a month ago.

The gf4 ti4400 gets crushed by most newish games like Doom 3, HL 2, Panzers. I mean...it will play them but it will only limp. It also won't run Battlefield 2, period.

Not to turn this into a bigger adapter contest but...

http://exit3.i-55.com/~suit/P450-6800-d.JPG

GPU/VPU
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT

RAMDAC
Dual 400 MHz

Fill Rate per Second
5.6 Billion pixels

Vertices per Second
525 Million

Maximum Resolution
2048 x 1536 @ 85Hz

Video Memory
256MB

Memory Type
DDR3

Core Clock
350 MHz

Memory Data Rate
1000 MHz

Memory Bandwidth
32GB/sec.

Interface Type
PCI Express

Connector(s)
Dual DVI
TV/S-Video

$20 gets that ti4200 which is not powerful enough to run the most recent games. I guess if you have to dough the best way would be to go to newegg.com, and do a search under video cards and just put in a minimum $100.