Is That a GeForce In Your Pocket?

The good news: I acquired a new graphics card, an EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX. This is a serious fucking piece of hardware. It has Nvidia's latest chip, a hardcore piece of silicon with, oh, about 680 million transistors on it. That's more than double the number in Intel's top of the line Core 2 Duo dual-core processor. It has 786 megabytes of onboard memory, nearly as much as my entire computer, and 3x what the old card has.

You can see the new card next to my old one. It's about 4" longer, and the burly heat sink and fan make it at least an inch thicker. You can't see 'em in this shot, but on the other side of the board there are not one but two power jacks to make sure this guzzler gets enough juice. This is a mean fucking card. Shortly after this picture was taken, the EVGA card anally raped the old card, then shot it in the back of the head.

Which is too bad, because I can't actually use the new card. The output jacks don't line up with the port on my PC's chassis. If the port was about 1/8" taller, it would just fit. I'm going to take the PC to a shop and see if they can machine that port or cram the card in there somehow. When I get the fucker up and running I'll let you know how it is.

Why do I need such macho hardware? If you have to ask, you don't really get it, but here is one clue. Here is another.