Good games and developers houses need to be supported. When I still had my older rig, I pirated games simply to check if that game would run on my older-than-stoneage system. If it did, and the game was very enjoyable, I'd go out and buy it.
I thought I'd give my 2 cents... Aliens (god I love this movie.. well Alien is almost saga now, but meh) Predator 2 (this one too) Chronicles of Riddick (well, more of a prequel than a sequel). Evil Dead 2 (Bruce Campbell is my god)
I'm an ATi faboy of sorts, but I must say that a few years back, ATi current line of "3D accelerated" cards were utter shite. 3D accelerated my ass. Then some really smart dude came along and Radeons were born. Yay.
Get up at 7 (barely), go to the bathroom, make breakfast, eat it, brush teeth, dress up, go to class. This Usually takes around 45 mins. I come home, and sit on this chair, then I post on this internet message board about how shity my day was.
Opening ports has no effect on the optimal performance; opening ports just lets you use some programs. In any case, some users (like you) don't really see a difference.
Well, when i restored by backed-up settings, it worked ok. Sure, it worked after the optimization too, and faster to boot, but like isaid, the disconnection seemed more frequent.