OT: New PC!

[NullAshton]

Because it's basically a video game, without the game? That's mostly the graphics engine, textures, blah blah blah...

[AgentZero]

I see... Well, once I get it down, I'll be sure to come back and gloat.
In the meantime, I seem to be suffering from a variation of the Half-Life 2 stuttering bug. Video as well as audio is affected and the 'stutters' last on average 4-6 seconds, but every now & then I get one that's 20-30 seconds. The closest I could compare it to would be as if it's trying to read from a CD that's skipping (it doesn't run from CD, and the disc isn't even in the drive). I've tried every single offered solution on the Steam forums & elsewhere, and nothing works. Using the ATI Omega drivers got me about 5 minutes of flawless play time, but after the first loading screen, the stuttering came back.
I suffered through the audio stuttering on my old machine, and it was annoying but I still got through the game, but it's unplayable on my new machine, which is just bloody irritating.
Somehow, I don't think there's a solution for me, but if anyone can think of anything, that'd be great. Otherwise, Sin: Episodes looks kinda cool, anyone know if it uses the Source engine?

[Thermodyne]

Well, you should have the rough edges rubbed off by now, so it's time for some benchmarks

[AgentZero]

Well, only benchmark I know of is 3D Mark, and I scored 5328 on that with no tweaking done and I think it was Trillian still running in the background, so I don't know what effect that would have had. If you have any other benchmarks, or suggestions on tweaking, I'd love to hear em.

[Thermodyne]

CPU-Z
Sandra 2005
3D mark 01
Super Pi
All of the newer future mark stuff
Cinebench 2003

That should keep you busy for a few hours.