INFO: Building/Buying a Desktop (PC or Mac)

[Millie]

Please post any questions about desktop DIY builds, or desktop purchases in this thread.

Thanks,
Mil

[Millie]

BTW, please accept my apologies for having to recreate this thread from scratch. I was trying to edit my first post in the old thread to include the word "Mac" in it, and somehow ended up deleting the post, which then tanked the thread. Or, to put it another way: the liberal Apple-loving agenda ruined it all!

[Tuco]

Mac being in this thread is slightly abrasive to me.

[Desidero]

Damn Macs ruin everything they touch. Even the name is poison!

[Rythonn]

AnandTech: NVIDIA's 1.4 Billion Transistor GPU: GT200 Arrives as the GeForce GTX 280 & 260

Review of the GTX 280 & 260. I gotta say i'm not very impressed with it. Seems I would be better off buying another 8800 gt to SLI,

[Desidero]

From the various reviews I've read, the 280 is pretty disappointing. It's good that they are knocking the price down (probably around $500 now), but I still wouldn't buy it when the performance isn't that much better than the 9 series. I'd much rather just wait for a new card with a price to performance ratio similar to the 8800GT. All the rumors about the newest AMD/ATI cards sound pretty promising, but it's hard to tell how the new generation will stack up until everything is in the hands of public testers.

The one thing that I'm really looking forward to right now is CUDA. If it pans out as well as the demonstrations suggest, it will be pretty spectacular. Hopefully the CUDA demonstration wasn't bullshit like a lot of stats that NVIDIA's hype machine throws out.

[Rythonn]

According to my article I linked above you the price is $650 for the 280 and $400 for the 260.

[Desidero]

I'll dig up what I read... They are supposedly lowering the price since AMD is setting their prices very low.

*edit*Apparently it was a Fudzilla article, so it's of questionable legitimacy. My apologies. It still would not surprise me considering the extremely low prices on the new AMD cards.
Here's the article I saw.

[Zistrix]

nm

[Draegan]

I'm basing my new computer off the fallout of these two new cards. Whether than price dropage from the 9800's or the new ATI card since the nvidia one is pretty crapola.

[Kaio]

Originally Posted by Rythonn

AnandTech: NVIDIA's 1.4 Billion Transistor GPU: GT200 Arrives as the GeForce GTX 280 & 260

Review of the GTX 280 & 260. I gotta say i'm not very impressed with it. Seems I would be better off buying another 8800 gt to SLI,

With newer cards i kind of wish reviewers would show power usage with the other specs. Some of them are so goddamn high it really effects your setup.

[The Dauntless One]

Glad I didn't wait for this vid card. Now AMD on the other hand would be quite interesting if they are releasing something similar to the HD38xx series.

While the 9600GT is a good addition to the mainstream audience, the current lineup is pretty messed up. The 9 series was released not too long ago and they already released a new series of video card. On top of that, the "old gen" video cards are better bang for performance. What the fuck?

[Kaio]

Eh, it's only early adopter price for top of the line cards. The new 280 gtx is significantly better then both the 8800gtx and the 9800gtx.

Also not everyone wants to run shit in sli.

[The Dauntless One]

Still the 9800GX2 is better than the 280 and slightly cheaper.

[Kaio]

The gx2 is essentially 2 cards and was also ridiculously priced initially. It probably draws more power then the 280gtx which will be cheaper soon enough.

It is too bad that it is the same 65nm process as the newer 8xxx and 9xxx cards. That will prevent the 280gtx from getting that much cheaper.

When the 45nm cards come out thats when we'll be truly excited.

Even so the performance advantage is pretty good over the older G80 architecture so once the prices normalize this will look good.

This shows the GT200's performance advantage when running at the same clock speeds as a G80.