http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?cat=grfx&id=511&pagenumber=6
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/431/26/
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM0MSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8687

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/asus/EAH2900XT/b9.htm
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1100/15/page_15_final_thoughts/index.html
http://it-review.net/index.php?optio...335&Ite mid=1
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39578 (nvidia vs ati)

yup i was correct every gtx shipps with 2 x 6pin > analog PSU connectors. check the pic below
so my question is why is all this hoo-haa about 8pin ati connector when all you have to have is a 450+ watt PSU with enough analog outs? most have switched to SATA discs which have different power cables, which leave 1 dvd-rw combo hanging on the analog psu cable. so...?
http://www.ixbt.com/video3/images/g80-6/evga-8800gtx-complect.jpg

i've heard that you can use an adapter cable like this to power up your 8800 cards (2 of these come with the card in the box when you purchase it, at least for asus)



my question is - can you have the same thing for ati card?



cause even if they have the 4 pin power connector i don't really see the problem if you can use this adapter...

bah sorry didn't see you post here. yup, still not many people around here, true. hope to change soon though...

the motherboard is good imho. i'd also consider taking a look at this one: http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=248&l4=0&model=1289&modelmenu=1 - i would've taken that one..

processor is at the moment the best one for the money. very very few places where you need quad cores and many games still load one core of the CPU.. so i think it's a wise choice for now.. better get a motherboard to support the quad core and change the processor somewhere near christmas

if you are comparing between gts and XT i'd say wait for the XT as it promises to be better than GTS. however i'd suggest getting a gtx..

frequency of ram is important as it is actually how fast it goes. all those 3 brands are pretty good my suggestion is getting the highest frequencies from which you can afford. i'd personally go for OCZ if possible simply cause they are cool and make shiny gaming equipment=) but they are also more expensive in the majority of cases. anyway it's up to you

no clue about the PSU. i bought thermaltake toughpower 700 watt and it should be enough even for dual GTX and possibly (not sure but hope) even enough for dual XT crossfire. it's very silent and i haven't had any trouble with him so far. costs about 150 euro ere

the samsung hdd.. well i can't say anything BAD about it, but i'm not sure i can say anything good either.. I'm using seagate 320gb sata2 with 16mb cache and it is a dream. i've been using seagate for 7 years now and it never let me down.. ever. + it uses that new technology in their hard drives, don't remember it's name, which makes it work faster.. anyway about the samsung the only thing i've heard is that they are indeed silent. but in my experience samsung makes good value for money products and they are pretty stable and reliable.. however i'd suggest you reading some reviews about samsung hdds... as for me i'm always staying with seagate=)

about the screens i have a topic in OTHERS here in hardware section - you might want to take a look.

hope this helped. if you have more questions - shoot

your point is 100% valid. These reviews and facts give general guidelines for which products to look at. But if you got at a shop and see 2 monitors next to each other one displaying great and one rubbish you wouldn't care about the reviews much. The problem here in austria is that firstly there aren't many monitors in the shops and you normally have to order them and get whatever they bring you and secondly all the monitors in shops are connected through a switch with little or no calibration, settings and poor signal cause of the switch which sends it for 20 monitors.

And monitor is one of the most important parts of the pc because it actually effects your health and your eyes.

I personally wouldn't consider buying a screen from dell because i can't see it before i buy it. And monitors do have a lot of problems, from gradients/artifacts, visible backlighting on the sides to simple dead pixels..

a very valuable links from the russians about what type of panel is in the majority of modern lcd displays. They have been collecting that info for more than 5 years.. A must for anyone who wants to get the best screen for his money.

http://axofiber.no-ip.org/inside/monitor.lcd.panels.htm

LG is using AUO panel, dell is using samsung PVA, the exact same one which is used in the samsung panel (i'm takling about the displays i mentioned in the previous post) and Benq will most likely be using AUI panel, the same one is in LG. so basically LG=BENQ and DELL=SAMSUNG in terms of what's inside those monitors.

Many might wonder why the heck does LG use foreign panels for their screens? the answer is because some firms specialize in one panel size, some in the others, and it is cheaper to buy the panel from another firm rather than to start own mass production. there you have it.

All this ho-ha about ati and nvidia latest GPUs (well at least for nvidia we can call them latest, for ati it's still future gpu) made me wonder what will people plug in those monsters? I mean there's basically 1 major reason for people to give 400 to 600+ euro for a GPU - games. Games is what gets the industry going and new games = new requirements = new orders for the manufacturers. That's the mainstream at least. There's also of course HDTV and HD movies, but i think very few of us are gonna be using our GPUs for that purpose.

sooo i thought if i'm giving away 600 euro for a graphics card i want to play new games on a 1920*1200 resolution with full detail level. And in order to do that i need a screen... now the question is what's the ultimate purpose-built gaming display currently on the market?

Firstly, we are talking about ~ 1k euro display, because that's how much the majority of us will try to be able to pay.. more than that would be considered luxury. Secondly, it should be a minimum of 24", because that's when they start full HD resolution support. 1920*1200 or 1080p - how the cool guys call it

Few things to say about the panels or the actual stuff an LCD is built from. There are about 5 major manufacturers of LCD panels in the world, the largest is LG-Philips, the 3d largest is Samsung.

There are 3 major types of panels

TN - the 1st one used in LCD display, lowest viewing angles, basically the weakest of 3

MVA/PVA - middle class, more expensive, good viewing angles (178/178 in most cases), better color reproduction, better response times

S-IPS - most expensive pannel, almost always better response times and supposedely best color reproduction besides the fact that if viewed from an angle black turns a bit purple.

I know this is a very "fast and dirty" description of complex panels but just so you get a rough idea. I'm sure anyone could find examples of new monitors using TN panel performing better than some MVAs or whatever.

Virtually all old models (by old i mean introduced before 2003-2004) are on TN panels and that's what the majority of us are used to work with. All cheap models which cost less then 300-400 euro use TN panel, and many of them are quite good, like new samsung 20-22" vista certified monitors - they use fast accelerated TN panels there.

MVAs/PVAs started appearing not so long ago. Best examples are 19" samsung monitors like 971P which costs about 450 euro (in comparison to 226BW TN monitor which is 22" and vista certified and costs exact same amount of money - 450 euro.)

S-ISP - typical panel for Eizo/NEC monitors and the most famous one is 20wgx2 which is 20" and costs 550 euro

So much theory... now the actual list of competitors which i will update when i get new info

BenQ FP241VW ~ 1k $
size: 24"
max res: 1920*1200
brightness: 500
contrast: 1000
response time: 6ms
panel type: PVA

reviews from the web: still to come

DELL 2407 = 1080 euro
size 24"
max res: 1920*1200
brightness: 450
contrast: 1000
response time: 6ms
panel: probably PVA

reviews: http://www.behardware.com/articles/629-8/24-inches-the-dell-2407wfp-vs-the-samsung-244t.html

Samsung 244T = 1100 euro
size 24"
max res" 1920*1200
brightness: 550
contrast: 1000
response time: 6ms
panel: PVA
reviews:

LG L245WP-BN = 850 euro
size 24"
brightness: 500
contrast: 1000
response time: 8ms
panel: MVA
reviews:

NEC MultiSync LCD2470WNX-BK = 1050 euro
size 24"
brightness: 500
contrast: 1000
response time: 6ms
panel: PVA
reviews: to come

Basically what we see here is a pattern as all manufacturers use almost the same panel type for their screens with the same characteristics. Of course one differ from another and each monitor should be looked at differently as every manufacturer uses different types of acceleration for his displays.

From the looks of it i'd probably go for LG as it is the most affordable and offers various goodies like HDMI connection, 2 usb slots and very comfortable stand. From what i'm hearing, dell uses the exact same panel from lg-phillips in their monitors, only print DELL in caps on the screen and market the brand.

Another very interesting panel is the new BENQ which introduced grey frame insertion technology to get rid of artifacts, thus making the refreshrate of their panel 100 or 120 hz (currently NO LCD monitor supports refresh rates higher than 60 hz, or even if it says 75hz on your panel - it means the screen is somehow recalculating them to fit the 60hz rate - basically it's lies!) Really want to see what's benq up-to. However there's a review of another benq monitor using the same technology and the results weren't that much impressive. http://www.behardware.com/articles/646-5/benq-fp241wz-1rst-lcd-with-screening.html

Greetings, i'm a proud member of DAAMIT salesforce and i'm here to present to you the incredible RADEON 2900 XT

(here you can find a whole bunch of our brainwashing presentation slides which would simply carry you away!
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=148492)

After looking through those slides i'm sure the answer is obvious. ati*>nvidia. period*.







*
um, we didn't really think that was relevant to mention and our marketing department said not to tell anyone before they actually bought the card, but some bad people already did get the card and managed to read what's inside... the min requirement of 750watt power supply. Well, let's take a look at the current power supply market:

Thermaltake Toughpower 800 Watt - 210 euro
http://www.ditech.at/view.aspx?sid=2694214P15P3784P114P43P15003P05P2007from&pid=N85TT1&kat=122&menge=1

OCZ GameXStream 850W ATX 2.2 (OCZ850GXSSLI) - 190 euro
http://geizhals.at/a234158.html

So when you are buying a card for 400 euro + a psu for 200...  600 in total

For 600 in total you get the fastest overlocked gtx atm and when r600 is out, prices will drop 15-20% (what is rumored)...

I just bought a 700 watt psu from thermaltake and i thought it to last for 3-5 years cause my previous one was 400 watt, so almost x2 upgrade... If i want to get an xtx i'll have to change the PSU and buy a new one again. It should have MASSIVE advantage in dx10 for me to do that.. honestly..

the question i would ask is XT or GTX?

provided the fact that ati mentioned that their card would be faster in DX10 games.

if you want a card right now that is currently the best get a gtx/gts. but what happens this summer when first dx10 betas and ready games come out remains a mystery..

to sum up what do we know so far:

Nvidia:

PROS:
availability of the card

relatively low power consumption+temperatures

overclockable

drivers almost flawless now (have been around for half a year and all major flaws have been corrected)

nvidia - the way it's meant to be played program (evebody always has trouble with ATI cards in games like WoW - only got fixed in few latest releases of the drivers)

works great in combo with nforce chipset

CONS:
Sli isn't by far as efficient as Crossfire
High price (about 600 euro for the 630 mhz core card)

ATI

PROS:
Crossfire got improved in R600+ much more efficient than SLI

Bundles with Valve games (which you can get on the web anyhow)

Hidden DX10 potential which should blow everyone away in the new games

Affordable price

CONS:

Power consumption 750 WATT?! if you want it in crossfire you will need a portable nuclear power plant to run it. And the PSU will probably cost as much as the card itself...

Heat 100oC? You will need H₂O₃ to cool it off.. you know the kind of water used for cooling nuclear reactors...

With all things mentioned above is there a chance it to be overclockable?

ETA of the XTX version?

Drivers for ATI haven't been out that long that means that they will still be pretty much in beta phase when the card comes out and we get to be beta testers at least half a year (so long it took for nvidia to fix their drivers)


I'd say things don't look very bright for ati or DAAMIT as some like to call them, especially with the latest news about power consumption and heat... The only thing that can save ati is either the price or the unbelievable dx10 potential... Well, the cards will be cheap, but i'm not really sure about that potential..

Like the famous web campaign says: The future's bright. The future's orange green (as nvidia green)

Could anyone give any advice on which manufacturer should i choose?

ASUS EN8800GTX (575mhz core/1350mhz shader/1800mhz memory) - 555 euro
BFG 8800gtx OC (600mhz core/1400mhz shader/1800mhz memory) - 530 euro
BFG 8800gtx OC2 (626mhz core/1450mhz shader/2000mhz memory) - 575 euro
MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD-OC (610mhz core/1350mhz shader/2000mhz memory) ~ 550 euro

that's basically what i narrowed it down to. also, does anyone know when the actual price drop of gtx will occur? some say when new ati is coming out, some say when ultra is out on the 1st of may. does anyone have a clue? would hate to buy a card and see it in a shop 100-150 euro less a couple of days later 

Was looking for a new PSU to support 8800gtx and to last for several years. Stumbled upon this piece of equipment from thermaltake. http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Power/ToughPower/W0106/w0106.asp

From what i know the firm is doing pretty nice psu's. Anyone had any experience with that firm or that particular psu?

Costs 150 euro at Ditech. http://www.ditech.at/?from=fudzilla&geizi=1&pid=IDE66D&kat=380