2 quick questions

what's faster/better: PCI express or AGP 8x?
secondly, what's the diff between the red switch on the back of my power supply that has 115V and 230V, and i have it on 115V now. what's the diff between the two? and why do i have it on 115, not 230?

PCI - E is faster than agp i do think.
For your second question, don't touch it; it is this difference between living in north america and in europe because they have different wall socket output things. I thinks the reason. But in any event, don't touch it. haha.

Hope that helps. Try online to find some pci-e vs agp comparison, but i'm pretty sure pci-e is faster.

Right on both counts Zeppo. To go into a little more detail, a 16x PCIe slot has 4gbps of bandwidth and it's a two-way connection (so 8gb concurrently). That is about twice AGP 8x (and AGP is really only good at sending that data in one direction).

There is technically no real-time difference between the two as far as performance goes right now, but PCI-E has more room for expansion. It is likely that in the next generation of video cards the AGP 8x BUS will be saturated.

SSE4 is right on that. As for your 2nd question that relates to what volt outlet you are plugging into. You wouldn't want to plug into a 230v outlet when you have it set to 115v. It's best not to let the smoke out of your power supply.

Yes, its is a closely held secret among tech-folk that what makes your computer work (and just about any piece of technology, for that matter) is the Magic Smoke. Once you let the Smoke out, things won't work anymore!

And now you know...

...but, at the same time, current cards are only slightly faster on PCI-E than AGP. That will change in the near future, though. EDIT: SSE beat me .
While in the US, 110v @ 60Hz is standard (the frequency only matters because it's alternating current, therefore the electrons move back and forth, which is then transformed to DC in the PSU for use by electronics. AC allows for further distances without as much power) Your PSU should remain set at 115v because the transformer is set to turn 115v AC into 12v and 5v DC (the motherboard makes further changes to voltages for components), although it shouldn't do any damage while set at 230v, but it won't run.
Many countries outside of the US use 220v @ 50Hz, so you NEVER want to have it at the 115v setting. If you do, you are sending twice the voltage to your components and therefore instantly frying them.
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Further info:
http://travel.howstuffworks.com/question430.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/inside-transformer.htm

PCI-E is faster and dont you lay a finger on that switch.

Let us not forget the smoke from the hard drives. I know because I have seen it, in all it's glory.

Talking about 220v into a 115v setting? 24v/10v will do that to your components.

Actually, having a power plug fall apart on you and accidentally switching the 5v and 12v plugs will do that to you. ><

Whoops...I guess that motor was running a less than half RPM and all of the chips were getting double that they were supposed to .