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http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1645

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020625/in dex.html

http://www.theinquirer.net/24060221.htm

Anandtech

Tom's Hardware

Tech Report

Extreme Tech

Anandtech and Tom's Hardware have also posted reviews.

Anand says that it isn't worth $400, especially in terms of frames per second. And Geforce4 Ti 4600s are only $300 online and the Radeon 8500 is only about two benjamins, and both offer better performance.

MS admits in the linked article that the OS is not "optimized". It fails to use the new ARM instruction set, and worse, does not seem to use the power-management capabilities of the XScale. Supposedly the Xscale uses half the power of the StrongARM, but battery tests on the new PPCs do not show this savings. This fix will be a while coming, as the next version of the OS does not appear to be optimized either.

Interestingly, Asus in their upcoming Xscale PPC is coming up with workarounds, such as on the fly automatic clock and voltage throttling. So while the Xscale supports capabilites that MS is not using, the vendors are not waiting for next year for MS to get their act together.

Hopefully the vendors will also figure out a way to speed up the terrible benchmarks of the Xscale PPCs.

RAM: www.crucial.com
everything else: www.newegg.com

reviews: www.anandtech.com
general price updates: www.pricewatch.com
questions, web boards: www.arstechnica.com

1. First get an idea of how much you can afford to spend.
2. Think a bit about what sort of tasks you want the computer to do. Do you want high end video for gaming? Do you want to build a PVR? Do you want to build a small server to host web/ftp/email services over a broadband connection?
3. Go online and do some research to see what's out there to fulfill the role you envision for the machine. arstechnica, tom's hardware, anandtech, storage review, and other sites usually have good information on recent and upcoming technologies. I do a lot of looking to see what's out there and what's around the corner, then go back and revise my budget accordingly.
4. Decide what you need to buy. I don't generally go for the biggest, fastest, best, because it's generally twice as expensive (or more) as it will be in just a few months. I don't buy the cheapest stuff either, as it's usually of inferior quality, obsolete, or will give inferior performance compared to spending a small amount more on something better. I look at the price/performance curve, and generally buy in the "knee-bend" of the curve. The only exception is if there's something dirt cheap available for a non-critical component that doesn't make much of a difference (like a floppy drive, NIC, or keyboard) or an absolutely critical high-priority component that the system *needs* in order to perform its role adequately (like a GeForce card for a gaming station) or a SCSI controller for a file server.
5. Shop around. You can try pricewatch.com to get an idea what stuff is going for these days. But I find that shipping makes finding a real bargain somewhat difficult. That's especially true if you buy from more than one vendor. I try to go through one vendor, for simplicity's sake, and right now my choice is Newegg.com. They have very good service and their prices are often near the top of the pricewatch search results anyway. You can try local stores, too. Stay away from chains like CompUSA and Best Buy, and support small local businesses run by knowledgable, competant people. Their prices will generally be about twice the lowest you'll find on pricewatch, but you may find the convenience of not paying for shipping, not having to wait for delivery, and having someone to go to for questions and advice useful. If you're more experienced, you probably don't need that, but few people know everything about everything, and everyone you talk to can potentially teach you something.
6. Put it together. There's plenty of guides out there on the web that will go into detailed instructions on how to put a PC together if you need help. PC Mechanic is a good example, and there are many others out there. Read the instructions a few times until you know what you're doing, then do it.

Check out arstechnica for more information on homebrew PC's. They have a lot of information regarding reviews of components of computer systems, as well as letting people on to deals on new components. Good site.

Other good sites that people mentioned in previous responses are: anandtech and toms hardware for component reviews, and pricegrabber and pricewatch for finding the best prices on things online, and newegg is just a great online company that is very reliable and inexpensive for purchasing lots of electronic/computer components.

sigh... but anyways -- the answer you seek is not short, but can be summerized: it depends on what you want.

lets have a few scenarios:

1) you want the fastest, most elaborate PC there is for whatever compensatory reasons. build you self all-the-way. pricewatch, pricegrabber, gotApex Deals, techbargains, and dealwalk are all fine sites to look for deals. flamingo world have some stuff too. pricewatch and pricegrabber gets you the goods, and the rest of them get you the "deals", for example Dell is selling a 20" flat panel (very nice, i have one) for ~1600 -- yesterday you could have gotten it ~1100. just have to check those places everyday. and oh yeah -- go to overclockers.com and find some people to sell you waterblocks, you will need it.

2) average man wanting an averagely fast computer. build can get you more customization and you can "grow into it" more... for the longest time dell would lock the MB so you can't swap processors! and then you can't tweek the MB on ram settings, blah blah either. price is similar if you go and find a good deal. a P4 2GHz can be had at dell for ~600 bux -- no way you can beat that, sorry, especially if you are in CA and have to pay tax+shipping for everybody from pricewatch.

3) your mom/dad. buy one -- in fact, buy one used -- or even better, sell them one of your old, "retired" ones.

4) laptop users -- buy -- because there is no options here. but today unless you are really into water cooling and all that, a laptop gives you the same speed / blah blah anyway. i have a UXGA on my laptop -- sure i have to squint when i look at things, but whatever. p.s. get a good vid.card if you buy a laptop: they are not upgradeable -- however if you are REALLY desperate you can get processors for laptops (micro-PGA) from ebay.

in the end -- for what we want to do (fast system, blah blah) building does not save money. but it's like hotrodding. i have gotten out of the gig a while back (o/c, etc etc) and wont turn back. it's just too much trouble. my laptop has 64M vid.mem and can run most of the games i need it to (and if it really runs bad, it's just a productivity killer anyway). i hope the sites listed in (1) helps -- they are the better ones i can come up with. and have fun -- and last thing. save the reciepts! if you build yourself you WILL, by laws of probabbility, have crap happen and you will know good and well what's an RMA *real* fast.

lastly -- to make everything work out by building -- you will be continously upgrading your hardware. which means
1) you need to recompile the kernel a lot / reinstall windows a lot
2) know ebay like the back of your hand. this is probabbly the only way you have a system that mostly works, does not cost you TOO bad, and you won't have tons of spare parts lying around.

so is it worth it?... well? what is "having a customized PC" worth to ya?

I am currently in the same situation.

First, you have to figure what you want to buy. Read reviews suchs as Tom's Hardware and Anandtech (to name a couple).

Second, get an idea of the minimum cost by searching pricewatch.

Third, find a vendor to buy from:

Pricewatch: I have been burned by the cheaper companies before, so I make sure they have a good return policy.

Large Internet Suppliers: I usually end up buying things from amazon or buy.com (who are now starting to sell components), there are also huge component stores like newegg.com.

Local: But I've found the best service comes from local reatilers, because you can get the part replaced or exchanged the same day. It is up to you and how much time you want to spend.

This topic is going to create some huge flamebait.

vossman

Advice 3: watch bargain web sites, especially http://www.techbargains.com/ and Anandtech Hot Deals forum.

My advice for various retailers:

• http://www.directron.com/ (great source for cases, and various mechanocal necessities and cables)
• Dell Peripherals, if you manage to catch the needed part (drives/etc...) during a good sale.
• Someone already mentioned http://www.newegg.com
• Another site i have found to have great price and service in the past is Z-Buy.com

Hope this helps,
DVK

Advice: Don't unless you enjoy it and can accept a high-level of frustration. That said, two places to go for some good information about parts, prices and how-to.

1. Anandtech
2. Tom's Hardware

1. New Egg - parts (e.g. cases, cards, motherboards, etc...)
2. Crucial - memory

Generally speaking I try to buy the majority, if not all my parts from one or two vendors, because shipping can really make or break a deal.

There is no sinlge best "place," but a good start is of course, pricewatch, which compares a large number of online retailers.

Computer shows in your area are also a good bet, as small outfits will put together a barebones for less than even pricewatch can most of the time.

Finally, try "hot deals" forums like anandtech and fatwallet. They have decent coupon/rebate deals you can use locally or online to snag some great cheap accesories.

Hope that helps!

Check out Newegg for a pretty good selection of stuff. They don't have the best return policies, but they are a pretty good place. I also suggest looking at Anandtech for the motherboard/memory/video roundups which give the best prices for certain components. The places he references are usually higher quality than the lowball offerings given on Pricewatch.

When the headlines and the photos take up more space than the article itself, something is clearly not quite right.

When I go there I'm always half-expecting to see a half-naked girl holding a CPU (ATHLON 2300+ HOTTER THAN HOT - WE PROVE HOW AMD'S NEW CPU CAN SET FIRE TO YOUR HOUSE - DOWNLOAD OUR 745 MB VIDEO).

P.S. - To your list of reliable sites I'd add Anandtech. Yes, the articles are 20 pages long and each page only has about 5 sentences, but they are usually objective and well-written.

RMN
~~~

Solutions to your problem:

1. make a cable from you TV-out on your PC to your upstairs TV and use a RF-remote to control your movie. Much cheaper. Might even have better quality since the xbox player has some quality problems.
2. Move your TV to the basement. (NOT good for your back
3. Move your PC to the living room.
4. Build a mini PC and play ALL you dvd's wma & mp3's AND play all your PC games. This might be a little more expensive, but if you already have a 32 inch TV you do not want to save 100$ and get a not yet finished player.

AMDZone.com
Technoa.co.kr
Hardinfo.dk
Active Hardware
Ace's Hardware
Lost Circuits
Anandtech
Hexus
VIAHardware

Racksaver also announced a blade server using 132 2200+s in a 7 foot cabinet!

review at Ace's hardware


Much info about upgrading older boards to the new AMD.

At least here the reviewer make sure that both CPU work with the same memory.

Tom's gives the P4 PC1066, while 95% of the P4 systems are sold with DDR.

Review at Anandtech

Sorry to get involved in a big video card flamefest (and have no fears of my continued involvement as I won't be viewing this thread again), but I happened to remember seeing something just like this. And sorry that this is coming out of the mouths of Matrox indirectly through Anandtech, but this is the one I remembered.

Sorry to get involved in a big video card flamefest (and have no fears of my continued involvement as I won't be viewing this thread again), but I happened to remember seeing something just like this. And sorry that this is coming out of the mouths of Matrox indirectly through Anandtech, but this is the one I remembered.

2. The MCX462 doesn't mount on a P4. An Alpha 8045 costs less, and performs better. Instead of a Vantec Stealth fan, a low rpm sleeve-bearing fan (Panaflo, Papst, etc) running at a reduced voltage of 5V or 7V (by simply rearranging its power wires) will be considerbly more quiet, and typically provide more than adequate airflow. Panaflo's can commonly be picked up for $3-5.

3. You shouldn't need a case fan. Replace your PSU fan with a voltage-modded sleeve bearing fan.

4. I assume you mean when a disc is actually spinning in it? The Pioneer slot load drives are quieter than a lot of other tray load drives.

6. Rounded cables providing better airflow is a bunch of BS. What they will do is cause drive instability. They're designed flat for a reason.

Motherboard chipset fans should be avoided, and often can be safely removed. Video card chipset fans should also be avoided (GeForce4 MX440s are available fanless), but for performance cards, are sometimes inevitable.

Typically, the loudest thing left in your computer will be your hard drive. Seagate Barracuda IVs seem to be the best choice here. Whichever drive you choose, suspend it in a 5 1/4" bay by tightly weaving something elastic across the bay and around the drive. Sticking a hunk of foam in front of the drive helps a little too.

Alpha 8045 ($50 CAD), Panaflo FBA08A12L (2*$5 CAD), voltage mod ($0), elastic and foam ($1?).

I owe most of this knowledge to the shared experiences on the Silent-PC group.

Cost of new black ink cartridge for my printer: $40

Cost of laser printer with toner on eBay: $50

Maybe they should just sell disposable printers instead.

They just about are...check out this AnandTech forum thread on a $10 (after rebate) inkjet printer. You can't get replacement cartridges at that price.

The article is confused. Several things are being discussed at the same time. However, I talked to someone who said he saw a demonstration of a 5 GHz P4 at the conference. I am able to find no other confirmation.

The elements the article discusses are at least proof of concept. And, the article discusses results that are certainly the intention of Intel.

I was told several years ago by someone extremely familiar with the work at Intel that the fabrication processes for the transistors of a new microprocessor are designed about 4 years in advance. The fabrication processes determines the design rules. They determine the voltage at which the microprocessor will run. They determine the ultimate speed. So, everyone knows what is coming 4 years before it arrives.

The depth of negativity toward Intel surprises me. Usually, everything Intel does is examined for negative details, both in hardware reviews and on Slashdot. As the 2.4 GHz P4 shows, Intel delivers, so the underlying facts are positive.

I consider this negativity, which began, I think, with the recall of the 1.13 GHz PIII, and the initial slow speed of the P4, to be an enormous communication failure at Intel.

Here is a quote from a May 6th, 2002 AnandTech article, Intel Introduces 533MHz FSB CPUs -- Pentium 4 2.53 GHz: "Today Intel is working a bit ahead of schedule. Originally Intel was going to release one CPU, the Pentium 4 2.4B processor; the 'B' suffix denotes the use of a 133MHz quad-pumped FSB (effectively 533MHz). But courtesy of high yields and good performance in Intel's strict validation process, today you'll not only get one but two new 533MHz FSB processors - clocked at 2.4 and 2.53 GHz."

The Pentium 4 is beginning to get very positive reviews, but the tide of sentiment has not turned yet. People seem to be saying negative things out of habit. I suppose AnandTech is slightly ahead of the times.

Modern microprocessors are one of the most impressive scientific achievements. But everything associated with them takes time. They require $3,000,000,000 fabrication plants, which take time to build. Yet, a 1.8 GHz P4 now costs only $180. That's an amazing achievement.

If you examine the situation carefully, I think you will see that the evidence is that the baby with huge paws will grow up to be an impressive animal.

I estimated the costs associated with the XBOX, and it doesn't seem like they'd be taking such a loss, using today's computer parts prices:

(I'm using a 10% discount off of Pricewatch's lowest prices-- assuming no middlemen & huge quantities.. frankly it's probably lower.)

Celeron 733 - $45
(adjusted to intel's p3 estimated manu. cost of $35 + $10)
20 GB 5400HD- $50
64 MB DDR - $12
CAV DVD-ROM - $28

(now the guesswork)

Motherboard Manufacture - $30
(it's real simple & cheap)
NVidia Chip - $35
(rumored $50 at launch of xBOX)
Case/PS/Controller/Packaging - $30

This all equals $230. Which means they could have at least been breaking even before this price cut-- and will very soon be breaking even once again. Of course, none of this includes marketing or development costs-- but we know MS is in this for the long haul anyway.

In any case, I wouldn't be running out to the store, just to "cost" MS some $$$. Who knows, with cuthroat deals, they may already be breaking even at $199.

Why is this such a popular misconception? Having 128KB L2 cache doesn't make it a Celeron.

The misconception comes from the fact that it's the same damn die! In fact, the Celeron and the PIII were the same die as well, the Celeron just had 128KB of it's cache disabled. The processor used in the XBox was also from the same die, and also had 128KB of it's cache disabled, however they disabled the cache in such a way so that it was still 8-way set associative.

Ohh, and 8-way vs. 4-way set associative typically makes about 1% difference in performance. The associativity of a cache is a matter of diminishing returns, and going much beyond 2 or 4 way doesn't give you much. Just how often do you expect that you'll need more then 4 chunks of 32-bytes at exact 256KB intervals but not the chunks of memory right beside them? It's pretty rare. I know that Anand made a little claim of a 10% performance increase, but he probably couldn't even explain what set associtivity is, let alone make an argument as to why it would make a 10% performance difference.

You're probably correct about TSMC's yeilds improving, but do you think that nVidia paid TSMC for the bad dies in the first place? Nope. TSMC eats the loss when they've got poor yeilds, and reaps the profits when they have good yeilds. At best they're only going to pass on a small percentage of the saving to nVidia, who in turn are probably only going to pass on a small percentage of their savings to Microsoft.

Next correction? Oh yeah, the memory. The X-Box uses Samsung K4D263238M-QC50 chips, although it could probably use some other identical chips from other manufacturers. You can find info about this chip from Samsung's website. Here's the link. As you can see, it's DDR memory rated for 200MHz, for 400MHz effective performance. I suppose it's not really "DDR400", and it's certainly not "PC4200" memory, however it IS 200/400MHz DDR.

Signatures are a waste of bandwidth

I've been interested in Serial ATA since I first read about it a couple of years ago. I've been disappointed by the lack of news on it's progress, although Intel has apparently been demoing it in their future tech systems. Personally, I think part of the reason for the lack of news is due to wariness from the hard drive manufacturers but it could just be the usual delays in implementing something new. Hopefully, this will only mean a slow introduction and won't kill the new interface. Don't expect serial ata to become the standard until motherboard chipsets start to support it (next year).

The article that peaked my original interest - Anandtech Serial ATA

To answer the other part of the question, ATA RAID is a good solution for those who can't afford SCSI RAID. But for large organizations with deep enough pockets SCSI is still the best for perfomance, reliability, and warranteed MTBF.

Or as a single page instead of 12 try here

Here

The summary mentions quite a few interesting notes regarding the effect this card would have on current games.

- In "simple" games like Quake III Arena, the Parhelia-512 will definitely lose out to the GeForce4 Ti 4600. By simple we mean games that generally use no more than two textures and are currently bound by fill rate. NVIDIA's drivers are highly optimized (much more so than Matrox's) and in situations where the majority of the Parhelia's execution power is going unused, it will lose out to the Ti 4600. This can change by turning on anisotropic filtering and antialiasing however, where the balance will begin to tilt in favor of the Parhelia.

- In stressful DX8 games, Matrox expects the Parhelia-512 to take the gold - either performing on par or outperforming the GeForce4 Ti 4600. Once again, as soon as you enable better texture filtering algorithms and antialiasing the Parhelia-512 should begin to seriously separate itself from the Ti 4600. The quad-texturing capabilities of the core as well as the 5-stage pixel shaders will be very handy in games coming out over the next several months.

So from the look of it, Parhelia does not wipe out Nvidia (though I would like them to), but is a worthy competitor to nvidia in current games. It would be interesting to see how ATI and Nvidia match up to this new competitor in the coming months.

Be afraid. Be vewy vewy afraid.

First, that massive 20 GB/s of bandwidth is going to be needed, every bit of it. There is no bandwidth-saving logic on the chip at all, unlike ATI & nVidia's latest. Since occlusion detection can make a significant difference, and Z compression & fast Z clear also help a great deal (ATI claims their 8.8 GB/s performs like a 12+ GB/s system, a 36% boost), the Parhelia could be considered to have only 55% more bandwidth than a GF4 Ti4600 instead of 110%. If the next-gen offerings from ATI & nVidia have similar memory specs, the Parhelia could be at a significant disadvantage almost as soon as it comes out.

Second, the Digit-Life article mentions that early scores (from very raw drivers) show a mere 20-30% increase in scores over a Ti4600. Now admittedly this should increase, but Matrox are not known for their 3D driver optimisations, and nVidia are. A unified driver architecture will give you a head start right out of the gate, as you can take some advantage of previous optimisations immediately, whereas Matrox will have more work in front of them to get their drivers performing near the potential of the hardware. Look at ATI; it took them 6 months of focussed effort (and the odd quality hack along the way) to get their drivers up to scratch. Matrox have not traditionally given their 3D side or their software side as much attention, in my experience.

To me, while the triple-head feature could be useful to some (though I dislike external DACs - it's difficult to sync them closely to internal DACs, causing monitor beats), the 10 bit colour is to be applauded, and the vertex handling sounds very nice, anyone looking for performance would be better advised to wait for R300 and NV30.

On a slightly different note, was anyone else disappointed by the quality of the 16x AA screenshots? I expected more. The edge-only AA feature sounds like a very good idea (though it will not help alpha textures, just like multisampled implementations), but I'm a bit jaded after the miracles promised by ATI's SmoothVision didn't exactly set the world on fire. Guess we'll have to wait for performance figures.

Also, I wonder what their yields will be like. 80 million transistors on a 0.15 micron process sounds like something that's difficult to do cheaply.

Been spending too much time by the memepool, have we?

Although quite a few Samsung PC800 modules will run at PC1066 speeds without any problems, but if any installed modules are not capable of running at the higher speed, the memory bus will get capped at the current max of 400Mhz (or 3.2GB/s).

I guess for now, the new processors don't really, really need the higher memory bandwidth, but as the processor speeds start to hit 3+ Ghz, the extra amount of bandwidth will become more important.

Who said anything about .NET server or Longhorn Embedded? Those product families have always had key differences from their mainstream counterparts (that's the entire point of their existence), and there's no reason to expect that practice to cease. If the Longhorn GUI doesn't work for those platforms/markets, it won't be used there. Period. That doesn't invalidate the coming demands of the Longhorn GUI in the consumer desktop space though.

See this thread for further discussion 3DLabs Launching New GPU and these articles linked from it Tom's Hardware on 3D Labs Announcement and Anandtech on 3D Labs Announcement

Ph34r the coming of Longhorn, for it shall make you obsolete beyond your wildest nightmares! :-P

As for 3D acceleration in your Palm, I do believe PowerVR's MBX just might be your solution, or at least the beginning of the market. So it appears MS is not creating the "Xboy", PowerVR and ARM are. I mean really, who'd want increased power in a mobile computer anyways? Go figure.

- JavaJones

First before I say anything, I would like to say I'm a proud owner of a 20hr TiVo and it's great!

TiVo has been also a great company to work with, very responsive.

However, I don't think it's a good idea to team up with AOL. Maybe it's time to start looking at these video cards that are getting closer and closer to providing a TiVo like service--- ie, ATI's All-in-Wonder 8500 128MB & TV/Capture Card and the titantv service Now, before you assume that this is just another post claiming "you could build it yourself and play Quake on it too", check out the link. You can now schedule stuff, have it do time shifting, etc etc. I linked to the page that begins to talk about the tv recording like services. The actual review starts a few pages back. Anyways, word on the street is the TiVo on your pc isn't far away at all.

I've Googled and Googled, but have yet to find any resources covering homebrew on the Game Cube. It uses a modded IBM G3 and some interesting SRAM-ish memory. I'd be nice if a resource like Marcus Comstedt's existed. So far the closest I can find are photos of the guts, and some marketing from Metrowerks.

I suppose you are referring to something like this link

Just a quick rant...

What I would like to see from AMD is more in the way of compiler support for x86-64. The demo in the link above showed how it was already possible to run 32bit and 64 bit compiled applications already simultaneously. We need huge support from the chip makers to pull this off as an important evolutionary step in computing. At least if talking about enterprise computing.

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1609&p=1

I know I'm a whore, but AnandTech has a nice Round-up of All-in-Wonder cards, as well as some competing cards.

is available at Anandtech here it compares the AIW 8500DV (with gets the editors choice award)it also has similar offerings from Matrox and Nividia, if you want to see whats out there.

In the last month Anandtech had begun reviewing laptops with the same rigor with which they approach everything else! While they have only covered 3 laptops so far, I think the reviews are exactly what a technical person wants to read when they are trying to make an educated decision.
They have covered the:
Asus T9
Toshiba Satellite
and just today:
WinBook N4

I am really glad to see someone as trusted at Anand filling this niche!
-OctaneZ

In the last month Anandtech had begun reviewing laptops with the same rigor with which they approach everything else! While they have only covered 3 laptops so far, I think the reviews are exactly what a technical person wants to read when they are trying to make an educated decision.
They have covered the:
Asus T9
Toshiba Satellite
and just today:
WinBook N4

I am really glad to see someone as trusted at Anand filling this niche!
-OctaneZ

In the last month Anandtech had begun reviewing laptops with the same rigor with which they approach everything else! While they have only covered 3 laptops so far, I think the reviews are exactly what a technical person wants to read when they are trying to make an educated decision.
They have covered the:
Asus T9
Toshiba Satellite
and just today:
WinBook N4

I am really glad to see someone as trusted at Anand filling this niche!
-OctaneZ

In the last month Anandtech had begun reviewing laptops with the same rigor with which they approach everything else! While they have only covered 3 laptops so far, I think the reviews are exactly what a technical person wants to read when they are trying to make an educated decision.
They have covered the:
Asus T9
Toshiba Satellite
and just today:
WinBook N4

I am really glad to see someone as trusted at Anand filling this niche!
-OctaneZ

• AnandTech
  
• GameSpot
  

AnandTech had a good sub $200 video card review that includes the GeForce4 Ti 4200 (it also covers ATI's 128MB Radeon 8500LE).

As a frequent visitor of microsoft research facilities around the world (including the secret on in black mesa, nobody knows about that one becouse of the coverup after they tried and messed up big time working with the purest and potantially most untable copy of windows yet) I can reveal the folowing about their secret e-vaqDOTnet project. Remember that if you read this info and later work on any GPL code whatsoever our secret female assasins will be knocking on your door in minutes, they look cute but are deadly!
The evaq.net does have a a gigbit ethernet internet link but no need for a power cord thanks to the new microsoft implementation of electricity over ip (it has some enhancement making compatibility with future power-over-ip products highy unlikely unless you are prepared to sign away your soul for our documentation)Furthermore it does in fact not suck! While it does offer the new houselayout.NET conectivity saturising the gigbit link by sending data regarding the layout of your home to microsoft.com (they have some huge unused datastorage facilities now they suspended hailtorm you know) Microsoft will use the collected data to compose more efficient hovering-plans.

Posted as AC to protect my identity from the evil administrator!

On the topic of removing hardware from the x-box, all chips (the copermine based special pentium 3 version, nforce like chipset and the memory) are soldered on the main pcb only the harddrive and dvd drive are interesting but the dvd has a special power connector so you wont be able to put it in a pc.

Check out the Sub $200 Video card roundup on Anandtech and VGA Charts on Tom's Hardware.

The former has more commentary and a wider range of benchmarks. The latter has a wider range of cards.

And yes, you could bump up performance by turning off options, but, uh... you can turn it back on by spending another $10-25 too.

The games that give the top end cards problems are generally those with really shitty engines. Everquest, for example, has one of the worst engines I know of. But that doesn't change the fact that it's one of the most popular games out there, and that if you're an EQ player you are concerned PURELY with how the system will perform in EQ, not whether or not the code is well written.

FPS example
FPS example
Non-FPS example

Only with the note that it was a particularly strenuous test that isn't representative of the stress that will be found in the release of the game, I present a counter-example: UT2003 CPU-Scaling benchmarks on cards of today

FPS example
FPS example
Non-FPS example

Only with the note that it was a particularly strenuous test that isn't representative of the stress that will be found in the release of the game, I present a counter-example: UT2003 CPU-Scaling benchmarks on cards of today

FPS example
FPS example
Non-FPS example

Only with the note that it was a particularly strenuous test that isn't representative of the stress that will be found in the release of the game, I present a counter-example: UT2003 CPU-Scaling benchmarks on cards of today

FPS example
FPS example
Non-FPS example

Only with the note that it was a particularly strenuous test that isn't representative of the stress that will be found in the release of the game, I present a counter-example: UT2003 CPU-Scaling benchmarks on cards of today