Flameshot

Which components have you upgraded?

Your graphics card may not run Ultra Mode very well. If even at the lowest settings. From what we know, you need a 9800 to run Ultra Mode at it's lowest settings. The equivalent to the 9800 in the 200 series is the GTS 250. You may be able to run at it's lowest settings, but we don't really know much at this point.

Your processor is ok but it's on the lower end of the spectrum. It doesn't perform as well as Core 2 Duo's so you'll most likely experience bottle-necking.

You have more than enough RAM

Since no one else mentioned it....

Your video drivers are not being reported correctly. You may run into issues. I'd recommend cleaning the drivers out and reinstalling them. Now that I think about it, I'm assuming you actually went to ATI's website and downloaded the latest drivers and didn't leave the generic Windows drivers?

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking....I think you're asking for a way to post your system information?

You can always try using CoH Helper. It takes the information relevant to CoH and weeds out the overload of information in a DXDiag.

What a horribly overpriced machine. Looking at the other specifications (not even the video card) is enough to push me away from this machine. Best Buy is notorious for selling highly overpriced machines. In this case, you most certainly do not get what you pay for.

I took the liberty of doing a quick search on Newegg for similar specifications. As you can see, the quality is a lot higher on some of the products (Especially the video card) and the price is cheaper. Note: I didn't bother to check if it was all compatible for the most part, just did some quick poking around for general prices.

Assuming you don't have a case: MicroATX case with 585W PSU - $66.99
Assuming you don't have a burner and or don't plan to use your old one: Cheap LiteOn DVD Burner - $26.99
Motherboard: MSI AMD3 Motherboard with DDR3(Compatible with AMD Phenom II) - $79.99
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz Quad Core - $149.99
RAM: 4x2GB sticks for a total of 8GB DDR3 1333 RAM - $212.99
Hard Drive: Hitachi 1TB Sata 3.0Gb/s 7200rpm - $89.99
Video Card (Which we know will run Going Rogue at the very least with middle settings): XFX Geforce GTX 260 896MB DDR3 RAM - $214.99

Grand total (Without shipping): $841.93 Edit: I took the liberty of adding the zip code for your location and the grand total with shipping is $873.44

So in the end you're saving a little under $100 and you're getting a WAY better video card AND you're left with room to play (upgrade components before you buy or add an OS if you need to).

Speaking of OS. Adding Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM to the price, with shipping your total comes to: $978.43. So in essence, you're paying $30 for a graphics card that runs circles around the one in that HP. That Best Buy price isn't even including taxes....

You can of course reuse some of your old stuff as well to bring the price down. There's nothing wrong with reusing a HD that's working fine, or an optical drive that's working fine. Hope this helped you with a bit of perspective

Just to clarify here, please don't get me wrong. Your guide is excellent and this is certainly an optional for some. I just wanted to point out that it's not always necessary to have to pay for Cedega to play CoH under Linux.

Thanks for posting these je-saist. Very nice work

It should also be noted that it isn't necessary to use Cedega (Which it not free) to be able to play CoH. It does work under Wine as well.

Guru3D would have one.

Not having tried this personally, from what I understand you would need drivers for each. Some motherboards also require you to set some SLi function to enabled, even if you're not running SLi. This part I'll have to pass on to someone else for an answer, sorry!

Without the actual specs of the PSU I can't give you a definitive answer however, I don't see why you couldn't. Generally it's recommended at least 550W for running dual cards.

Also just in case "support" is misunderstood in my previous post (Not by you, but someone else who might be looking for this information)....It's not that CoH won't provide support for nVidia's PhysX (As in technical support). The game doesn't recognize nVidia's PhysX at all. Therefore PhysX will not work with this type of setup in CoH.

The built-in PhysX on the nVidia cards is not supported by CoH. Although the setup is definitely possible, it's useless when it comes to CoH as they only support the original Ageia card.

Here is what I'd recommend and in the order I would do them...

Note: You may need to get the drivers in Step 2 before formatting/reinstalling and burn them to a disc so you won't be left without a network card.

1st: Format/Reinstall Windows. You're having way too many issues for a fresh install. I suspect something was borked with the installation.

2nd: Go to the manufacturer website for your motherboard and download/install all of the drivers available for your particular model. This step is very important and should be the first thing you do after a fresh installation of Windows.

3rd: Once all of the drivers pertaining to your motherboard are installed, download/install all updates from Windows Update. Including SP3. I generally recommend doing this before installing video drivers as this will create a stable environment to install said drivers. Your OS will be up to date with any kernel fixes and or resolve any issues some drivers may have had in the past.

4th: Download/install the latest drivers for your video card. If you know the latest drivers won't work for you, go ahead and download/install the last known good drivers for your card.

You're welcome to continue to try to resolve this the hard way (ie. Troubleshooting/installing/uninstalling drivers etc.), but if you just recently formatted and installed Windows I would just bite the bullet and start over again with a clear plan on what needs to be done and in the order suggested above.

It's been suggested already, but it clearly needs to be mentioned again. Update to Service Pack 3. That's your first step.

So....you believe you've had 8 bad video cards?

Anyone else see anything wrong with that?

I've had 1 fan malfunction on an nVidia card over the last several years. I merely had to take it apart to clean it. If you've gone through 8 video cards, I think it's time to be looking at other causes. Although it's possible all 8 failed because of shoddy manufacturing, the chances are pretty slim.