Your Favorite Christmas present for 2010

[Guest]

the ATI cards had the stick on the Nvidia cards when I built mine a couple of years ago...a 4850 would be relatively cheap now...the 4870 is the next card up and that would be reasonable now as well 2 years down the track...they are probably 1 gig cards now but were outperforming the top end Nvidia cards at the time including the one your buying and were half the price...then NVidia dropped their prices...I've got a 4850 in my system and it runs all the latest games very well...also make sure you have a good power supply...they skimp out on those 2 when building systems for people...with what you got there a good GPU card and a good power supply will be noticed when you get a new monitor that has good resolution capabilities...you've got a nice v8 under that bonnett so match it up so it can show it's grunt...If you can get your hands on a ATI 4870 for the little bit extra you've got a card that blew the doors off the competition when it was released a couple of years ago...

And now you've made me look at what's around at the moment and all that stuff is old...

I just priced up a similar system to yours through a couple of pc places I know build them and your price is similar for what you're getting...it was approx about $100 more for the 4870 in a 1 gig card and worth the extra...or if you want to future proof it even more seeing as you have the latest version windows it would have directx 11.. the ATI 5770 is similarly priced but has newer technology...also the new monitor you get down the track would benefit from a card that can punch out HD quality...also runs on less power than the 4800 series and creates less hear in the case...however the 4870 1 gig card is top value at that price. Either of those 2 cards will go well.

Are you using it for games ?

Are you looking to watch HD movies on your new monitor ?

The new monitors are full HD (1920 x 1080 )

The problem with the ATI cards is that ATI has aligned themselves with AMD these days. They are supposed to run better on AMD chips rather than Intel. I decided to stick with Geforce and got the next model up from the 9800xt, which is the gts250. Theyve got some good benchmark tests with various chips, vid cards etc on this site which u may want to take a look at
http://gamingpcs.com.au/

Yeah i'll be using it for games ... cant wait to get back into the latest games. The best my old pc could play was Halflife 2, so now i'll be able to play anything. And no i dont really care about HD and doubt i ever will. As long as i can watch normal movies im quite happy. Besides, downloading a HD movie would waste too much of my bandwidth. I only get 20 gig to play with ... yes i will be moving across to adsl2, but really i shouldnt have to. Telslut and Optoss are greedy arseholes.

[Guest]

Now the dust has settled and we have all had time to play with our new toys or decide who we are regifting presents to next year.... What was you favorite present received for christmas 2010.

For me it has to be rockband with ACDC rockband game closely followed by my Roostermania Roosters jersey, only because it has not arrived as yet.

Discuss !

You'd like this one Mario.

A one hour flight as captain in a B737-800 simulator

Take offs and landings or city to city?

decisions decisions.

I might go the take offs and landings.

[Guest]

I was originally going through a mate of mine in Adelaide and he didnt seem particularly keen to help after xmas (nfi why) so i went thru umart.com.au and scored a mega bargain.

Here is the new specs ...

* Intel Core i7 920 Processor LGA1366 2.66GHz 8MB Cache CPU
* Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R X58+ICH10R QPI 6.4GT/s DDR3 2000 PCI-Ex16 SATAII RAID IDE GLAN heappipe ATX
* G Skill 6G(3x2G) DDR3 PC12800 9-9-9-24
* Western Digital 1.5TB SATAII HDD 32M Cache Green Power
* Gigabyte GTS250 OC PCI-E 1GB DDR3 Dual-Link DVI VGA HDMI HDCP 3-Way SLI
* Asus VH192C 19 5MS 10000:1 HD DVI SPKR
* LiteON IHAS324 SATA DVD-RW 24X Black Retail
* CoolerMaster Centurion RC334 Elite Black NO PSU
* Power Supply 650W (ATX)
* Logitech Deluxe 660 Cordless Desktop Keyboard+mouse
* Microsoft Windows 7 Pro 32bit OEM(Microsoft OEM Terms&condition apply)
* Kaspersky Internet Security

All for $1712 ... considering i got a monitor and burner extra from my mate's last quote, well he can go jump

Now that's a nice rig...Umart is where I do my shopping but got I got the guy just near my work to match thier quote and system and it was easier for me but Umart is great...

You'll have a ball with that machine and a good monitor...very nice rig...the Graphics cards a good one too...I have an intel chip and the ATI card runs really well but at the end of the day there's not much in it and as long as it runs a game well that you enjoy playing 2 or 4 frames per second more won't change your fun level at all...

Your motherboard allows you to wack another card in as well so keep an eye on the prices and when the GPU card drops in price in 6-9 months or so snap one up and make it a sli machine...it will be an awesome machine...