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Why is the submitter only pimping the HotHardware review? Here's more (in no particular order):

HardOCP
Guru3D
Anandtech
Bjorn3D
PCPerspective
nV News

- http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=482
- http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=861&cid=1
- http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6538
- http://www.mvktech.net/content/view/3357/48/
- http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=287
- http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=33872
- http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/08/23/review_ati _radeon_x1950_xtx/
- http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/X1950XTX
- http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=954
- http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/radeon-x1950x tx/index.x?pg=1
- http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2007324 ,00.asp
- http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/23/ati_releases_rad eon_x1950/
- http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/375/
- http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/131
- http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2 020&cid=3&pg=1
- http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_x19 50_xtx_performance/
- http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/X1950XTXreview /

up to date list: http://www.madshrimps.be/forums/showthread.php?s=& threadid=26526

OK, so I saw people comparing prices earlier, so I figured I'd go do my own price comparison. My goal would be to replace my aging home PC with something a bit faster. Here are my results.

Apple iMac 1.83Ghz Core Duo vs Dell XPS 410

with the following requirements:

1. 1GB RAM - I like my World of Warcraft fix, and it sucks with anything less than 1GB
2. 500MB Hard Disk space - I download a LOT of files, and would like to repartition some of the unused space for extra OSes
3. DVD+/-RW DL drive - I download a lot of files

Here are what I ended up with:

• Apple iMac - $1,674.00
  • 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512
  • 500GB Serial ATA drive
  • ATI Radeon X1600/128MB VRAM
  • SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)
  • Keyboard
  • Mighty Mouse
  • Mac OS X - U.S. English
  • 17-inch widescreen LCD
  • 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo
• Dell XPS 410 - $1,765.00
  • 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512
  • 500GB Serial ATA drive
  • ATI Radeon X1300 Pro/256MB VRAM
  • DVD-ROM 16x
  • DVD+/-RW 16x (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)
  • Dell Optical USB Mouse
  • Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard
  • Windows XP Media Center 2005 Edition - U.S. English
  • 20-inch widescreen LCD
  • Sound Blaster® X-Fi XtremeMusic (D), w/Dolby® Digital 5.1
  • 1.86Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo

Differences

1. The video card is the most difficult difference to figure out. According to Guru3D, the X1600Pro (I'm assuming Pro, because they have no non-Pro X1600 listed) has more pixel and vertex shader units, but lower clock and memory speeds. For reference, the X1300 Pro 256 and X1600 Pro 128 are referred to as having the same MSRP in this article.
2. The Dell system has a much larger monitor (20"ws vs. 17"ws).
3. The Dell system has a Core Duo 2, while the Apple has a Core Duo.
4. The Dell has a Soundblaster card. I haven't the foggiest clue what the Apple has.
5. The Dell has a faster DVD+/-RW... for that matter, it has two drives. This is standard on this model.

Personally, it sounds like the Dell has better hardware. It should also be noted that changing anything on the Apple costs significantly more than changing it on the Dell. For instance, upgrading to 2GB RAM costs $140 more for the Dell, but $200 more for the Apple. Upgrading the processor to 2Ghz (actually 2.13Ghz) costs $50 for the Dell and (along with a 20"ws monitor upgrade) $325 for the Apple.

Not really.
My motherboard has Dual Bios on it, one copy is the original BIOS, the other is the custom one.

If the custom one breaks or fails, the primary original switches on.

problem solved.

According to my search, there are already graphics cards which have this capability as well, here is an article about a geforce 6600 with it.

Core 2 Duo ... how's that different from Core Duo? from gur3d.com
The key differences of the new architecture [Core 2 Duo] from the "ideologically closest" Intel Core Duo (Yonah) are as follows:
* Improved instruction decoder extended to 4 decoders of x86 macroops (vs. 3 of Intel Pentium M / Core Duo)
* 128-bit SIMD instruction performance of 1 instruction per clock in each execution unit (twice as faster as Yonah)
* Improved memory operation and hardware prefetch mechanisms
* L2 cache is dynamically shared by both cores depending on load (as seen in Intel Core Duo)
* Further improved energy saving
* A new SIMD instruction set SSE4.

I know that some GeForce cards have hidden driver settings that let you adjust the speed of the fan if your hardware supports it. RivaTuner is such a tool that, among other things, will let you set the speed of your card's fan when apps are using 3D features and not. My "fancy" eVGA GeForce 6600GT can't set its own fan speed apparently, which is disappointing since it's the noisiest thing in my case.

You can get a preformatted inf file here.

If you want to do it yourself, in windows go into device manager and view the properties of your video card. Then go into the details tab and select hardware ids in the dropdown list. You can then use the last value displayed and add it among the other hardware id's in the nv4_disp.inf file. For most unrecognized cards, this requires adding two lines of text to the file.

http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name =Sections&file=index&req=listarticles&secid=13

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2717

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/326/

http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=213

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/9529

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/03/09/ati_and_nvi dias_same_day_mega_launch_mayhem/

Well, ATI Tray Tools allows you to set a hotkey for sending the monitor into standby, and if you don't have an ATI card there's always this and a shortcut...

np: The Orb - Edelgrün (Pop Ambient 2006)

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=182&type=expe rt
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODg1
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/geforce-7 800gtx-512/index.x?pg=1
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2607
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=751&cid=2
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/285/

Listed alphabetically.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2593
http://www.avault.com/hardware/getreview.asp?revie w=evga6800gs
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafik karten/2005/test_nvidia_geforce_6800_gs/
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/X16_GS/index.h tm
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/278/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODgy
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=747&cid=2
http://www.noticias3d.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo= 541
http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_6800_gs/ind ex.shtml
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/geforce-6800g s/index.x?pg=1

There are lots of other reviews out there, too. Looks like the 6800GS kicks the X1600 where it hurts. Over and over and over again.

- [H]ard|OCP
- Avault
- Computer Base
- Driver Heaven
- Guru3D
- Hartware
- HotHardware
- Noticia3D
- nV News
- The Tech Report

I shamelessly stole this list from Hardocp.com

My one take away issue is the fact that a lot of audio card makers are having trouble getting high quality audio out of their PCIe cards. as mentioned here. Everybody else will start cranking out the 8 port SATA 2 cards soon (I don't think they have settled on that standard yet, have they?), looking around i've seen x1 firewire cards, but x4 multiport fw800s cards are sure to be in the works also.

obviously you missed the fact that when gaming at 1600x1200 and are using 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering that the x1800xt beats the shit out of the gf7800.

if you're buying a 500 dollar card, are you seriously worried about benchmarks that are run without aa+af? this card even does HDR (hi dynamic range) plus AA, something that the gf7800 can't.

this card is way more sophisticated and highly refined that the brute force 7800. the 7800 isn't bad but that this card can do with 16 pipelines what the 7800 can't do with 24, says a lot.

and that's just raw performance with todays games. never mind the fact that the 1800xt comes with 512megs of super fast ram... ready for well into the next generation of games, whereas 256meg 7800's are already obsolete for the high end of the next generation. sure 256 will be enough if you pare down the resolution and lower the texture detail. one example is the game F.E.A.R... on the 1800xt it absolutely trounces the 7800 in performance.

my advice... read ALL the reviews you can get your hands on. there are too many discrepencies if you only read one or two. if you want to get a more full picture, get to reading.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2552

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r520/

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r520reviewxvxv /

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1867116 ,00.asp

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_x18 00_xt_xl/

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/262/

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIy

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3603

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?article id=734&cid=2

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews /ati_radeon_x1800_x1600preview

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=172

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=407

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/8864

and check out the wicked new 3d tech demos... both are very impressive but the toystore demo is jawdropping.

http://www.ati.com/designpartners/media/edudemos/R adeonX1k.html

wmv9 hi def format but plays fine in mplayer or VLC.

Listed alphabetically so no preference to which site is good or not.

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r520/
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r520reviewxvxv /
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/262/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIy
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3603
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews /ati_radeon_x1800_x1600preview
http://www.noticias3d.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo= 527
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=172
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=407
http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/8864

You know, when I see forums (fora ?) like this one :
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=6c0ea13f 7045a90c2b42f49d0018a603&threadid=136813
with people hooked on MS marketing, I pity these fools, and I think the requirements for Vista are going to be actually huge.
What is described in this forum is full of wishful thinking IMHO, but it will be a good way to compare what is actually delivered against what was promised, once Vista is out.

Amusingly enough, history repeats itself.
In this MS Windows Vista apology, you start to see things like that : "Microsoft admitted that it had problems with stability with Windows ME and XP (without SP)".
But if you read Slashdot (even on this thread) or other sites, you see LOADS of people telling you that Windows XP is very stable and does not crash anymore. They call BS on you when you say that in real life, you see loads of WinXP reboot unexpectedly (with SP2 or not, and that means it crashed) and most that become unusable after one week of running as a desktop, or plain lock up, or rot after some weeks of use, ...
Well, history repeats itself. When there was only Windows 9x, there was a lot of people blaming crashes on drivers or users. As soon as WinXP was out (and it started with Win2000 actually), everyone admitted how crap Win9x is. I wonder how people could put up with so much crap actually.
Had the same experience with XP. Actually, when I switched people to Linux, I just waited for their WinXP to become unusable without my support (as I do not support Windows users anymore). And they ALL destroyed themselves. So much for stability.
All this to say I'm sure that once Windows Vista is out, a lot of people will start admitting how WinXP is crap.

The roblem I tried to expose was that most of the time you don't need all lights to act the same. In D3 even the lights that absolutely don't need to be dynamic, are static and are treated so (i.e. eat away CPU time). It doesn't need to be a hack-job to boost frame rate. Imagine a switch to set lights as static or dynamic in D3 editor. Then you could set those lights that you want static and vica versa. As a rather primitive but very obvious example; imagine a boxed room with 1 light at the top. The light is static and can't be destroyed. In D3 that light is treated as a fully dynamic light that casts fully dynamic shadows. As I already said there is some caching done in D3, but fps's could be boosted even more if you could set this light to be static in the editor while making the map.

FarCry is actually (from my point of view at least) a very powerfull engine. It can do both, clostrophobic indoor areas, as well as extremely large outdoor areas. It can handle liquids well, supports HDR, but has some problems with shaders (is it just me or do all the models look plastic?).

Crytek has released a technology demo of their latest engine which will be used for their next title link.
This sceene looks pretty much like a scene in D3. Compare it with D3.

I think I know what you mean by 'clean'. To be honest I'm allways torwards the 'clean' route rather then doing a hack or a workaround. But in the case of D3 it is really too much, too soon. Of course 5-10 years from now, every engine will support fully dynamic lighting, because it will the best performance/quality ratio.

This is actually one of the best found "upgrades" for video cards in recent past.

In order to enable the extra pipelines all you have to do is modify the Registry (in Windows) and if all of the pipelines are functional then it "just works". The great side to this is that if there are any problems witht he pipelines then you can just revert back to the original settings.

Previous mods like changing the Radeon 9800 pro into a 9800 XT required flashing the card with a different firmware to unlock the disabled features, or worse (like the old geforce4 to quatro mod) required soldering contact points on the card.

The first few batches of this card were pretty hit and miss ( and usually 75% miss) but as Nvidia refined their chipset manufacturing process more of these cards are actually using high quality chips that have fully functioning pipelines that have just been disabled to sell at the lower price point, so your chances of getting this "free upgrade" are pretty good (esp with certain models).

There is even a free tool http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163
that gives a GUI interface that shows all of the pipelines, their status, and allows you to change them on the fly (you can change the settings back and forth but a reboot is required to take effect).

You mean like this Gigabyte 3D1 (Dual GPU 6600GT) card?

You can find your flame-sptting video card right here ;)

Methinks the only real reason you'd want to keep your drivers closed off is because you're artificially handicapping your hardware to increase differentials between various (actually fairly identical) cards you've got on the market.

SoftQuadro anyone? btw i upgraded my FX 5200 to Quadro FX 500. in professional 3D apps (only OpenGL of course) performance goes up at least 2x...

Well, I guess that counts as linux too.

If you can walk around the thing and the steroscopic pairs change accordingly, how is that different from reality?

The two main differences are latency and multi-viewer capability.

When you move around a true 3D image there is ZERO latency. You move your head back and forth, you always see the right view and it's perfectly in sync with your viewpoint. Any system that has to track your head, and then generate a stereoscopic pair based on that tracking result is going to have some latency. The result is that the image seems to swim a little bit. And it doesn't take much latency to make many people get a form of motion sickness. (Consider with 60fps display you have generally at least 16 msec of latency, and trackers usually pile on at least another 10-30msec or so, at best. That's plenty to induce motion sickness in many people, and in those that don't feel sick, at least it is enough that the swimming of the image is obvious when you make quick movements of your head.

Second, with stereo pairs, only one person can get the correct 3D view at a time. So it kind of cuts down on the potential for use in a group setting. Not to mention that you have to track the viewer and/or wear special eye gear. That cuts down on the potential uses also. You can't, say, have a 3D kiosk that people can just idly walk by and be wowed by if they have to line up one by one and put on some kind of tracking head gear to see the effect.

So there are a number of real reasons why you'd want to have a real 3D image-generation device instead of a device that's merely stereoscopic. If you just want to sit in front of your monitor and appreciate 3D porn, then there's nothing wrong with stereoscopic images, and at $150 or so (compared to $50K) the price is certainly right.

I've gone through this a few weeks ago and it took me 2 weeks to figure it out. Anyway, in order to save you guys those pains, make sure you download the video driver and stereo drivers in PAIRS. That means if you run the 45.23 stereo driver you also need the 45.23 video driver. You'll find a lot of info/help on this issue at the guru3d.com forums.

The Guru of 3D:
Corsair XMS ProSeries DDR Modules

The newest DX9 benchmark is Aquamark3 which uses a real game engine also. The official release is 15-Sep but here are some early benchmarks: http://www.guru3d.com/article.php?cat=article&id=7 6&pagenumber=9 testing both nvidia's current 4523dets and the upcoming 5175dets.

I read this review over att guru3d before. The guy has a very honest take on SWG. Review here

I get mine from guru3d. There seems to be a lot of sites out there that you can d/l them from, but I never remember the other names. :)

Here's a lot easier guide to turn 9500 into 9700.
It's a software upgrade.

Please mod this up.

Not only have Lite-On had a 52X drive out for a while, you can also flash the firmware from an "old" 48X drive up to 52X speed. An "overclocked" Lite-On drive is no different, hardware-wise, than the real thing.

That said, my 48X Lite-On is fast enough for me - and no, I've not burned any coasters writing at that speed. Those of you who believe it's impossible are living in the stone age - high speed writing is here and it works great. And it's cheap! Paid $53 for my drive, and 48X media is no more expensive than slower media - just as with the hardware, as the media improves it replaces the older, slower media at the same price.

There are physical characteristics of CD's that worry me about 52X writing (or reading), however, and that's why I won't go that high - it's not a question of getting a bad write, but a serious issue of exploding discs at such a high rotational speed.

I said this elsewhere. I also pasted a tangentially related rant about Smart Tags.

Guru 3D: GeForce4 / nVidia NV25 videochip

GeForce4 Specs

really? I have a tnt2 (Diamond tnt2...I forget the revision number...) in my machine...I know its old, I'm waiting for creative to release a geforce3. But, I've had my Diamond Viper 770 forever (and so have all of my friends) and I (them too :-) have never had _any_ repeat _ANY_ problems with them. Be it using the drivers that came with the card, or the latest detenator drives I downloaded from Nvidia (for Linux or win32). Either your board was defective (did you try to exchange it?) or you shoved it into a pci slot some how. Was that voodoo5 you bought pci? If it was, have you ever tried another card in your AGP slot? That could be fried. Also, check your BIOS, do you only have 64 megs of ram, and have your AGP apeture size set to 64 megs? The TNT2 chipset was one of the best chipsets in my mind. I'm still running a Viper 770 on my windows boxen at home, and my linux box here at work.

Not a Panasonic press release but a CEBIT review:

http://www.guru3d.com/cgi-bin/newspro/ktalk/985170 455,97536,.shtml

No prices either. :(