Pimp my PC

[BliarOut]

Seeing as my company can buy me computer toys I think it's time I pimped my graphics a bit. I'm thinking I want to be able to watch TV on the net (no rf/digital signal in the office) and run Vista Aero etc.

LCD/TFT what's hot and what's not in the world of graphics at the mo?

(currently running a 21" crt on a bum basic graphics card).

[chris watton]

BliarOut said:

Seeing as my company can buy me computer toys I think it's time I pimped my graphics a bit. I'm thinking I want to be able to watch TV on the net (no rf/digital signal in the office) and run Vista Aero etc.

LCD/TFT what's hot and what's not in the world of graphics at the mo?

(currently running a 21" crt on a bum basic graphics card).

Well, there's only one 'family' of graphics cards that are Direct X 10 ready, and that's the NVidia 8800 series, the top of the range card is a 8800 GTX, which really does fly, but you need a quick and modern CPU to exploit it fully. It's cheaper cousin is the 8800 GTS, which has half the memory of the GTX and runs a bit slower.
I can only speak for the GTX version, as I have it, and it plays EVERY game with full setting enabled and still get rapid frame rates (although I'm not sure if it's because I have mine combined with an Intel Extreme quad core CPU) Oh yes, 2 GB of memory now seems to be the norm for playing high end games.

Regarding TV cards, they can be had two a penny from most online PC websitesa lot no more than £20/30.

[SneakyNeil]

Damn, I thought this was a thread about LED-impregnated IDE cables


DX9 and a fair bit of video ram for Aero innit?

Edited by SneakyNeil on Friday 27th April 14:20

[eyebeebe]

chris watton said:

BliarOut said:

Seeing as my company can buy me computer toys I think it's time I pimped my graphics a bit. I'm thinking I want to be able to watch TV on the net (no rf/digital signal in the office) and run Vista Aero etc.

LCD/TFT what's hot and what's not in the world of graphics at the mo?

(currently running a 21" crt on a bum basic graphics card).

Well, there's only one 'family' of graphics cards that are Direct X 10 ready, and that's the NVidia 8800 series, the top of the range card is a 8800 GTX, which really does fly, but you need a quick and modern CPU to exploit it fully. It's cheaper cousin is the 8800 GTS, which has half the memory of the GTX and runs a bit slower.
I can only speak for the GTX version, as I have it, and it plays EVERY game with full setting enabled and still get rapid frame rates (although I'm not sure if it's because I have mine combined with an Intel Extreme quad core CPU) Oh yes, 2 GB of memory now seems to be the norm for playing high end games.

Regarding TV cards, they can be had two a penny from most online PC websitesa lot no more than £20/30.

I'm running a GTX on an E6600 (Windows system rating of 5.3, which is the lowest of all the components. The GFX gets a 5.9) with 2gb of Corsair Dominator RAM. Same story here. Nothing can slow it down on full settings at 1680x1050

I'm now waiting for DirectX 10 games.