angshuman

(w00t)

Yep. My 7800GTX is more than a year old, and I'd still call it "high-end". It's as fast as a 7900GT, and the only Nvidia offerings faster than it are the 7900GTX and the 7950GX2.

Are you sure about the 65nm bit? If ATi has access to a stable 65nm technology, I am sure Nvidia couldn't be far behind. My info was based on bits and pieces of rumors flying around and some personal speculation, so I could be wrong. There's no way Nvidia's going to be stuck with 90nm if ATi launches on 65.

First iterations (ultra-high-end and high-end) are likely to be on 90nm. Then they'll introduce the mid-end and low-end parts on 80nm, and these will be followed by high-end refreshes on 80nm.

I'm running the pre-RC1 version of Vista Ultimate on my system. It looks really, really good, and it has a bunch of extremely good features that make you go "why on earth did they take so long to come up with this?" A significant amount of planning and design effort seems to have gone into the system. Unfortunately, it still has plenty of rough edges and is a HUGE resource hog. I'm running it on an X2 4800+ with 1Gig RAM and a 7800GTX, and I get the feeling my machine is barely holding on. This is without any additional bloated software or drivers. 2GB seems to be the bare minimum to run Vista smoothly. Maybe things will get better towards release but I don't have too much hope since the system is already in RC stage. Overall, it seems like a rough, first-attempt implementation of an otherwise good system.

Short article, and somewhat limited in scope (only one benchmark), but a good read nonetheless. At this point in time, this is probably the only benchmark that allows a fair apples-to-apples comparison of system performance with or without a PhysX. I'm starting to believe even more that in a lot of games, the additional polygons generated by the PhysX screws up the graphics system. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2828

Yeah that's what I was thinking, a 60" LCD would probably cost more than a trip to the moon and back, all limbs intact.

Isn't that one of those dual-PCI slots where you can plug in an AGP card? IIRC AGP performance sucked, and it didn't support PCI-express either.

High Dynamic Range Lighting/Rendering. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/lostcoast.ars/2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_rendering

Any standard 3D engine should be able to handle that with a little bit of work. Have you played the Natural Selection mod for HL? It's a multiplayer strategy game in which one guy sits in a Command Chair right at the start of the game, and gets a top-down view of the map which he uses to make strategic decisions, while the rest of the team fights in FPS style. Isometric shouldn't be an issue either. It's a simple matter of setting the appropriate camera matrix for the view that you want.

Usually, mild overclocks (~5%) will not cause permanent damage to your GPU. If you start noticing artifacts or unstable behavior, scale it back immediately and you should be okay. But do keep in mind that your warranty goes kaput the moment you touch those clocks (they have ways of detecting this), unless you have an eVGA or XFX card (not sure if BFG supports overclocking these days). I completely agree with Samurai that factory cooling solutions suck, except for the dual-slot solutions such as the one on the 7900GTX and the top-end ATi's. The problem is that aftermarket cooling solutions are a bit expensive ($30-$40), you'll have to decide whether they are a reasonable investment given the original price of your card, and the kind of performance benefit you are expecting to see from the overclocking.

Not from Sony's point of view.

What could be more advanced than programming a product to fail just when its successor is about to be launched?

Don't worry, Hades, within 2-3 years it's all going to be on-chip - Graphics, physics, AI, sound, network, wireless, memory controllers, hard disk controllers, everything. The only thing left on your motherboard will be power supply capacitors and memory slots.

AGP card prices are actually quite higher than their PCIe counterparts, and this delta seems to be increasing if anything. A 7800GS AGP costs $250 and a faster 7900GS PCIe costs $212. Supply is low, demand still seems to be relatively high. People are refusing to spend the $50-odd bucks to buy a new motherboard, but they seem to be willing to pay a $50 premium to buy an inferior AGP card.

Well, I actually like the idea of ad-supported games. The games themselves are free, of course, right? ...RIGHT?

If you are downgrading an Nvidia driver, you'll have to use a tool called Driver Cleaner (google it) to make sure your newer driver is completely uninstalled. Here are the steps: - Uninstall the NV drivers from Add/Remove Programs - Restart your machine in Safe Mode - Run Driver Cleaner, and make it earse all Nvidia graphics stuff (there should be an option to that effect) - Restart again in normal mode, and install your favorite driver.

BG2:SoA

Thanks, Meta, I had forgotten about the XL. Here's the updated order: - Nvidia: GX2 > GTX (or Ultra) > GT > GS > no-suffix > XT > LE - ATi: XTX (or XT-PE) > XT > XL > Pro > no-suffix > GT > SE There's a huge difference between Nvidia's notion of GT and XT, and ATi's... they purposefully use them as a jab at each other. For Nvidia, the GT is a high-end part, very close to their top-end offering, while the XT is a very low-end part that is worse than the "vanilla" or no-suffix version. This is reversed for ATi. I believe Nvidia's the culprit here. Previously, Nvidia only had a GT and ATi only had an XT. When Nvidia decided to introduce a new low-end part, they used ATi's high-end suffix for it. A few weeks later, ATi returned the favor.

At the moment I can't see any AGP Nvidia cards at this price point. The 7600GS is in the $150 range, and the 7800GS is in the $250+ range. For PCI-express, you could get a 7600GT for $114 after MIR (~$150 without rebates), a 7900GS for $212, or a 7900GT for $232 after MIR (~$260+ without rebates). It's sometimes useful to keep the different suffix conventions in mind: - For Nvidia, GX2 > GTX (or Ultra) > GT > GS > no suffix > XT > LE - For ATi, XTX (or XT-PE) > XT > Pro > no suffix (not sure if they have these) > GT > SE

Again, seconded.

Seconded.

Well thanks to everyone for their help - heres the new rig. Delivery next week and then back to HL2 and general gaming. Congratulations!

You might want to visit these forums: http://www.avsforum.com Here's what I've heard about rear-projection systems (these are also applicable to front-projectors): DLP systems tend to suffer from a so-called "Rainbow-effect", while LCD systems suffer from a "Screen-Door effect". Among flat panels, Plasma TVs have burn-in issues (if you continually watch 4:3 content on a 16:9 TV, your screen's going to get baked), while I don't LCDs have any disadvantages apart from being prohibitively expensive at such sizes. When you're at a store comparing TVs, the units you are comparing should have exactly the same input being fed into them, and via exactly the same interface (DVI, HDMI, whatever). Fiddle with the brightness, contrast, color and filter settings on all units you are testing. Some units may have bad default settings, but could potentially offer better picture quality when tweaked. Sometimes stores will intentionally use sub-par settings on some units in order to sell their favored brand.

Well, the good thing is, the game's not pretentious. It doesn't have a very solid story, but it never really tries to shove a seemingly-heavy but actually shoddy story down your throat. The storytelling is fairly mild (at least compared to RPGs etc.) and it fits in well with the gameplay. The overall package is very pleasing, and the feeling of adventure that I got from both HL1 and HL2 was something I couldn't find in any other FPS. A rollercoaster ride indeed; and I didn't for a second miss the lack of open-endedness.