The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Exactly.

 

Your idea of cheap is definitely different from mine lol. I'll admit that they don't break the bank, but when you need to buy two it adds up past what I can afford to spend right now.

 

Well, a 24" 1920x1080 monitor is <£200, the 24" 1920x1200 Dells are >£400, the 30" 2560x1600 Dells are c. £1000.

 

just buy a 50 inch HDMI HDTV.

 

I've only seen one HDTV that would have worked for photo editing. But I haven't actually done that much 'in store' viewing :S Black friday, I may be going to Best Buy. If I'm unimpressed with their deals, I'll do my shopping online like I generally do.

It's truly a shame that the HDTV manufacturers aren't more descriptive for us tech savvy people. I want to know what type of panel they're selling! E.g. S-IPS

 

HDTVs are awful for colour reproduction and just image quality in general really. Massively high contrast so good for films but not much else. The abysmal pixel density doesn't help either. PC monitors are definitely the way to go, and there's a reason why diagnostic monitors are typically fairly small.

 

Sounds to me like LG makes some good HDTV's
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1247089

 

Most brands are much the same unless they get something wrong really. The Toshiba/Samsung/LG TVs are mostly all as good as each other. I certainly have no complaints about our Regza XV.

 

Toshiba is generally all around a good company I've heard. Seems like I heard something about them being the first to make a super large Tv or something to that effect :S 100+ inches If i'm not mistaken.

 

Hmm, not sure who had that accolade. Despite the fact that almost all of the Toshiba TVs I've had have been because they've happened to be the best value, I've been pretty satisfied with almost all of them. The only thing they don't seem to be able to make very well is a power switch.

However the UK-based production plant was closed this year in favour of Eastern Europe, so it's possible that production quality will drop. That said, Dell Ultrasharp monitors are made in eastern europe and they're still pretty good.

 

Don't mind me while I berate myself again LOL!

Nvidia is really making me angry now. The 210 is a piece of friggin trash. Worst decision I've ever made. My brother just brought over the HTPC. I tried to start it 4 times. 2 times there were error code/beeps. The other 2 were freeze ups. I removed the Geforce 210 and low and behold, its running without flaw now.

I don't understand. I stressed the holy hell out of it not that long ago without hiccup! It's a little late tonight, but tomorrow I plan on hooking the Gforce-210 up to my secondary computer, to see if it does the same thing on that board. Any problems there, and I'll have a 100% guaranteed bad card. I guess they happen. But for such a weak card, that just doesn't seem right...

Edit:
Damn! I see the script error followed me to the next page

 

On a slightly brighter note I just coughed up $80 and a case of beer for a 955BE. 3.8GHz, stock 1.35 volts, 2400 NB. Not much else to say except it runs cooler and I might be switching out to the Gigabyte 790X-UD4P for nothing else but temps and ease of use...

 

i5 is back in my main PC at long last, no complaints from the system other than the standard reinstalling the graphics driver. Sadly running the Q9550 in PC3 has been delayed due to the fan holder for the CPU cooler going missing
As good as that cooler is I don't really want it to run a Q9550 when fanless!

 

Bit of a turn up for the books, the GTX580 is out, and it makes some good first impressions - good to the extent it's almost worth the name change.

HD4870: 100% performance, 150W
HD5850: 155% performance, 151W
HD5870: 180% performance, 188W
HD6850: 150% performance, 127W
HD6870: 175% performance, 151W
GTX480: 190% performance, 270W
GTX580: 230% performance, 260W

It's also priced slightly more forgivingly than was expected, at £410, or $560.

nvidia have got their punch in before AMD, and it's a big punch. The stock cooler drops the temps from 94ºC with the GTX480 to a hugely more respectable 77ºC, and seemingly does so with a reduced acoustic profile too. How much of a difference there is in the latter department nobody has yet said, but it seems to be relatively considerable, at least in a multi-GPU setup.

The GTX480 would have been absolutely demolished by the upcoming HD6900 series, but now the 580 is here, competition is actually hot once again, believe it or not.

However, the GTX480 has one chink in its armour.
In every game that isn't hugely biased that has been tested, the GTX580 has been outperformed by a pair of HD6870s.
Now, two HD6870s use slightly more power (300W versus 260) but they cost slightly less (currently £390 vs £410, and in the US it's a bigger difference at $480 vs $560).

That's a serious contender.

 

That's a steal, nice going.

That is a tough decision, but for the benefits of running a single gpu I'd pay the extra 80US (if I actually wanted an nvidia gpu again).

 

im shocked at the GTX580!

less power consumed, queiter, cooler, and yet more powerfull than the GTX 480. this is what fermi should have been in the first place.

 

The real question is how well will it fare against the HD6970 when it's released in a fortnight's time.
The GTX580 matches the noise level of the HD5870, and given all Radeons are calibrated the same way this means it will be quieter than the HD6970. Given the thermal calibration of Radeons, the HD6970 will also run hotter (not that this is an issue).
Given that the price of the GTX580 is lower than expected, the HD6970 isn't likely to be that much cheaper than the GTX580 either, so it really comes down to performance, and for the top-end user, whether the magnificent scaling of the HD6800 series in crossfire will extend to HD6900 crossfire setups.
All the preliminary benchmarks of the HD6970 show it as 1.35x the GTX480, whereas the GTX580 is 1.21-1.22x the GTX480, so theoretically the AMD card should have a 10% lead. If they keep the release price at the stated value, it should still be a better buy than the 580.

 

everytime they release a new card the price just gets more and more expensive. we need more GFX chip makers in the market.

 

Yay more competition

 

Not true at all. $600 graphics cards have been around for at least 6 generations now.