Upgrading Part 3

Let’s continue the upgrade saga. One of the things I always try to do during any PC upgrade is maximize the free games I get with the hardware I purchase. Since I don’t buy many games anyhow, there’s usually a high probability that I won’t own the free titles and will get some benefit from them.

The motherboard I chose was the ASUS A8N-E. I like the NForce motherboard bios, but don’t need SLI (you’ll see why in a minute), so the A8N-E is a good choice. The question that should be apparent at this point is – how did I get a free game out of this? Well, Mwave.com is giving free copies of Half Life 2 via Steam when a motherboard/CPU combo is purchased. Since I was just about to purchase Half Life 2 for $39 at Best Buy, this is a nice freebie.

First free game.

I wanted to upgrade the sound on my motherboard. I decided to get a Creative Audigy 2 ZS and was first looking at the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. Was attractive because of the additional firewire ports that I currently don’t have on my motherboard. As a bit of an afterthought, I looked at the cheaper “Gamer Limited Edition” version of the card. It had only one firewire port, but included five free copies of full version games. Halo (another game I was about to purchase), Rainbow Six 3, Splinter Cell, Jedi Knight Jedi Academy, and Tomb Raider the Angel of Darkness.

Now up to six free games.

I didn’t need a SLI board because I decided to get an ATI XL800 card. At first I was simply going to purchase the ATI brand card, but I did a little more investigating. MSI Computing sells a RX800XL card that includes three free games – Uru, XIII, and Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow. OK, I’m not a big Myst fan so Uru is a complete waste, but it’s still a free game.

Final tally – nine free games.

When will I have time to play all of these games? I don’t know, but I can promise that at the very least, Halo and Half Life will get some serious attention. Then Rainbow Six 3, followed by the collection of Splinter Cell games. After that, who knows?

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One thought on “Upgrading Part 3”

  1. Feel free to install Jedi Acadamy anytime. Multiplayer/Sabers only 1v1 is always enjoyable 😉

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