k... As far as reformatting anything... You don't explicitly have to, however, there may be conflicts between old and new drivers, and with the new stuff, windows might not be as happy as it could be. As to the maximizing anything, let alone everything... No idea what you have, but if you're worried about reformatting, maybe your stuff isn't the best off the shelf you can buy and while being an upgrade should be better than your old system, will probably not max out everything forever. It *might* max out some stuff with out any problem, but it will be on an application to application basis.