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[TheFatOne]

It may be outputting 480i by default over HDMI. Hook it up to another HDTV and choose 720p output (and disable 1080i output). Also, try outputting 720p from a PC to ensure it'll take that resolution. In all honesty it was a bit of a terrible buy for use with a PS3, you'd be much better off switching it for a 16:9 1080p monitor if you can.

Thank you thank you thank you I can't thank you enough. I did this at my brothers house hooked up the PS3 to my monitor and bam works like a charm. I tested Killzone 2 out on my monitor and WOW!!! it looks incredible. Everything is just so clear and crisp compared to my shitty TV. Ok one last thing I know I need something to get audio from my PS3 I just don't know what. Can you help me out?

Edit: I want the audio to come from my PC speakers

 

[brain_stew]

A note about triple buffering: it will greatly increase mouse lag (by 2 frames, I believe) over regular V-Sync. If you can run a game with V-Sync without a hitch, then don't force triple buffering.

The only lagless solution is to completely run without V-Sync, but many people can't accept the tearing.

My general rule is this:

1) If it's a single player title, I'll run V-Sync, and triple buffering if I need it
2) If it's a multiplayer title, I need to eliminate mouse lag so I turn V-Sync off.

Well the the mouse lag has never been noticeable to me, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that you get a much better framerate (and thus responsiveness) over standard vsync. So whilst the latency may be an extra frame (or two, not sure which) each individual frame is of shorter length anyway so it usually evens itself out. Though yes, if you're 100% confident you'll always be hitting 60fps (i.e. with older titles) you might as well turn it off, though since I have it enabled globally I can never usually be bothered to edit specific profiles since I don't notice it anyway at 60fps.

I'd never class no vsync as an option tbh, I'd rather gouge my eyes out.

 

[DarthWoo]

The 4850 was never designed for 1080p gaming, I've tried and it doesn't quite cut it. Its performance will often fall off a cliff at a high resolution like that because it just doesn't have the memory or bandwidth to support it.

Get a GTX 260 (216) or Radeon 4890 instead both have roughly twice the memory and bandwidth which makes a huge difference at 1080p and above.

Yeah, I decided to just cancel the 4850 since I'm willing to spend a bit more than I was due to my tax refund check. However, I'm having trouble finding any dimensions on the various 260s or other cards I'm looking at. I want something that's not that much physically larger than my current 9600 SSC, especially not so large that I'll have to yank out one of my hard drive cages. Either that or I need to find a cheap cover that will fit where my floppy drive is. This system came with a floppy drive and so there is no spare cover to pop in if I have to remove it to put my second hard drive in the first drive cage. Or is it ok to put two hard drives right on top of each other? I like to have at least one cage space separating them.

 

[brain_stew]

Yeah, I decided to just cancel the 4850 since I'm willing to spend a bit more than I was due to my tax refund check. However, I'm having trouble finding any dimensions on the various 260s or other cards I'm looking at. I want something that's not that much physically larger than my current 9600 SSC, especially not so large that I'll have to yank out one of my hard drive cages. Either that or I need to find a cheap cover that will fit where my floppy drive is. This system came with a floppy drive and so there is no spare cover to pop in if I have to remove it to put my second hard drive in the first drive cage. Or is it ok to put two hard drives right on top of each other? I like to have at least one cage space separating them.

The GTX 260 is a huge behemoth, you have been warned. The 4890 might be a bit smaller, worth looking into.

 

[A Twisty Fluken]

The 4850 was never designed for 1080p gaming, I've tried and it doesn't quite cut it. Its performance will often fall off a cliff at a high resolution like that because it just doesn't have the memory or bandwidth to support it.

I find that it's not too bad for most games at 1080p. It isn't ideal, you're right, but it's good enough to support my old axiom of "better to spend $100 now and $100 in a year than $200 now." I figure that if the 4770 is any indication, we're looking at a pretty good year of gains.

 

[BravoSuperStar]

So I installed my OCZ vendetta CPU cooler over the long weekend. Been running about 6 days now, very pleased with the results. After a 7 hour Team Fortress 2 session last night the CPU temp was a very acceptable 44c, GPU temps where about 55c. And this is with all the case fans on lowest settings.

This is the Cooler and this is the front intake fan I bought. The vendetta uses a 92cm fan and it's dead quiet, attaches using rubber mounts so no vibration noise and keeps the cpu cool running at a mere 1000-1500rpm and the scythe 120mm S-FDB intake fan is practically silent

Very pleased with the noise levels overall. It's a home theater/big screen gaming PC and keeping it quiet was a primary concern. The Antec mini P180 is an awesome case, sound damping up the ass. Even came with rubber grommets for mounting the hdd.

Super happy with this setup and the phenom IIX4 and the 4870 w/ HDMI out and samsung spinpoint drive. Now if I can just hold off the temptation to throw an SSD drive in it, lol....

 

[TheExodu5]

Well the the mouse lag has never been noticeable to me, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that you get a much better framerate (and thus responsiveness) over standard vsync. So whilst the latency may be an extra frame (or two, not sure which) each individual frame is of shorter length anyway so it usually evens itself out. Though yes, if you're 100% confident you'll always be hitting 60fps (i.e. with older titles) you might as well turn it off, though since I have it enabled globally I can never usually be bothered to edit specific profiles since I don't notice it anyway at 60fps.

I'd never class no vsync as an option tbh, I'd rather gouge my eyes out.

Well, to be fair, a lot of people don't really notice the mouse lag. In the end, it's only 2-3 frames of lag out of 60 (since the frames need to pass through the triple buffer before being displayed). The big issue is the lower your framerate goes, the longer the frames last, and the more input lag will be introduced due to the triple buffering.

I've always had an eye for minute lag and framerate dips and they generally affect me more than most.

With V-Sync + Triple Buffering, I just feel a slight disconnect with my movements...the difference is barely visible, but it's there. It's really only an issue when I need the upmost precision in multiplayer titles. It's also only noticeable in shooters, since those are the only games where the entire screen moves at a fast pace with respect to your mouse movements. V-Sync + Triple Buffering lag is undetectable to me in games like Dawn of War 2, or WoW.

---

There's also another issue I've found that can introduce lag. What happens is, a frame can be rendered by a GPU and a CPU independantly. Video card settings let you set it so that the CPU renders ahead of the GPU. I'm not sure what setup causes it, but the rendering of some games seems to tie the input to the CPU rendering, meaning that if your CPU is rendering 3 frames ahead, it may introduce 3 frames of lag. Oblivion was notorious for this.

 

[Binabik15]

Check out the Tech Report PC guide linked in the op and see how much you can put together a similar rig to its "utility player" or "econobox" for. 500 euros should be more than possible, ordering from UK etailers might be a smart move what with the pound being worth bugger all. There's a link to some in the op, I'm sure some will ship to continental Europe.

I think 500 is okay for him, thanks. Now I only need to figure out what belongs into a pc and what doesn´t.

 

[Gully State]

I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on another 4850 (there's a coupon and rebate such that it comes out to be $75) and crossfiring. I've got some questions.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?nm_mc=AFC-SlickDeals&cm_mmc=AFC-SlickDeals-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA&Item=N82E16814161259

1) Will my power supply be able to handle this? I've currently got a Zalman ZM600-HP with the specs below

2) What kind of performance gains will I get from this crossfiring @ 1600x1200? Really I just want to be able to run Crysis better. I'm not ready to upgrade my video card right now b/c it hasn't even been a year since I picked this card up and outside of Crysis, this card has run everything else beautifully at my monitor's native res.

 

[Crazymoogle]

I suppose I'm not really expecting a concrete answer, but just throwing out the issue rolling in my head right now:

1. $300 to add another gig of RAM and an SSD to an X41 Tablet (1.5GHz Pentium M/1024x768) - The tablet itself going for around $400 on eBay US.
3. Keep holding out for a reasonably priced X200 auction (all the good ones seem to be US only, damn it!)

Spending 2K seems wildly unlikely for me, but I'm not even certain the X41 can handle Windows 7 alright. Intel seems to have discontinued driver support for 915GM.

 

[DarthWoo]

I find that it's not too bad for most games at 1080p. It isn't ideal, you're right, but it's good enough to support my old axiom of "better to spend $100 now and $100 in a year than $200 now." I figure that if the 4770 is any indication, we're looking at a pretty good year of gains.

Might the same card with 1GB of memory make much of a difference? I'm mainly hoping to get about the same FPS at 1920x1080 with a new card as I got at 1280x960 with the 9600 SSC at the same quality settings.

Edit: Also, since this will be my first widescreen display, how do they usually deal with applications that don't really support widescreen? Let's say I just want to start up an older game with no wide mode, but don't want to run it in a window, and also do not want it all stretched to hell.

 

[Monroeski]

Still in the planning stage, not sure if I'm going to get a new computer or not, but a quick question since I'm a bit out of practice on dual booting -

If I am going to set up two OSs on one HDD (Windows something and Linux something, most likely Windows 7 and Ubuntu), would the best thing to do be setting up 3 partitions; one for Windows, one for Linux, and one for programs, files, etc.? Or would I want to keep Windows programs and Linux programs on different partitions, thus leading to 4 different ones?

I've always before just had one bigass partition (single boot system) on my HDD and dump everything in there, but I've heard it's better to keep the OS installed on a separate partition.

 

[DarthWoo]

Ah nuts, I just realized something else. Does anyone know how a graphics tablet with a 4:3 work area can still be used on a 16:9 display?

 

[TheExodu5]

Still in the planning stage, not sure if I'm going to get a new computer or not, but a quick question since I'm a bit out of practice on dual booting -

If I am going to set up two OSs on one HDD (Windows something and Linux something, most likely Windows 7 and Ubuntu), would the best thing to do be setting up 3 partitions; one for Windows, one for Linux, and one for programs, files, etc.? Or would I want to keep Windows programs and Linux programs on different partitions, thus leading to 4 different ones?

I've always before just had one bigass partition (single boot system) on my HDD and dump everything in there, but I've heard it's better to keep the OS installed on a separate partition.

I usually do:

Windows Partition (with Windows Apps)
Linux Partition (with Linux Apps)
Swapping Partition in FAT32, to swap files in between the two easily

There's no point in installing Windows Apps on the non-Windows partition, imo, since many apps require the registry and are essentially tied with your Windows installation. This isn't true of everything, but is true of many apps.

 

[larvi]

I need to get my daughter a laptop since she's going away to college in the fall. I've already built her a desktop that she can use for most of her gaming needs but she would like to have a laptop that she can use to at least play WoW on when she comes home on the weekends. I don't want to spend a lot and it looks like most of the cheaper ones come with either the Intel HD4500, Geforce 8200m or radeon 3200 hd. Anyone have any experience running WoW on any of these?

 

[TheExodu5]

I need to get my daughter a laptop since she's going away to college in the fall. I've already built her a desktop that she can use for most of her gaming needs but she would like to have a laptop that she can use to at least play WoW on when she comes home on the weekends. I don't want to spend a lot and it looks like most of the cheaper ones come with either the Intel HD4500, Geforce 8200m or radeon 3200 hd. Anyone have any experience running WoW on any of these?

Sorry, I don't have any experience with these chipsets...but you might want to see if you can get something with an 8600 for a small premium.

What about something like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152108

It's got a Radeon 4670 for $750.

This one seems solid as well:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220520

Has an Nvidia GeForce 120M for $799. Gets over 5k in 3D Mark 06, which is not too bad for a laptop. Should definitely suffice for WoW.

 

[larvi]

Yeah, I was looking at similar options as well, was just hoping I could get something closer to 500ish rather than 700ish. Her last laptop, an IBM R series, didn't last 2 years before the LCD backlight went out and prior to that she went through several keyboards as the keycaps would break off during normal typing so the more disposable the better.

I was trying to talk her into a netbook that she could take to classes and I could easily put together another desktop for cheap so she could have one at school and one at home but she doesn't like typing on the netbooks at all.

 

[Minsc]

Ah nuts, I just realized something else. Does anyone know how a graphics tablet with a 4:3 work area can still be used on a 16:9 display?

It works the same way one can display a 4:3 game on a 16:9 screen. However you'd like. I have a Intuos 3 4:3 table, and a 16:10 display, and it works great.

You can actually configure it to your heart's content. Make the tablet a section of the display, make it the whole display, make a section of the table the whole display, or make a section of the table a section of the display.

 

[madmook]

I need to get my daughter a laptop since she's going away to college in the fall. I've already built her a desktop that she can use for most of her gaming needs but she would like to have a laptop that she can use to at least play WoW on when she comes home on the weekends. I don't want to spend a lot and it looks like most of the cheaper ones come with either the Intel HD4500, Geforce 8200m or radeon 3200 hd. Anyone have any experience running WoW on any of these?

I'm pretty sure those will blow for gaming (unless you want to use all the lowest graphical settings).

First you need a budget.

Then you need to decide whether you want the "desktop replacement" 17-inchers or whether you'd want a bit more portability with the 14/15/16-inchers.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

what are the latest drivers for Nvidia? have they come out yet?

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

I need to get my daughter a laptop since she's going away to college in the fall. I've already built her a desktop that she can use for most of her gaming needs but she would like to have a laptop that she can use to at least play WoW on when she comes home on the weekends. I don't want to spend a lot and it looks like most of the cheaper ones come with either the Intel HD4500, Geforce 8200m or radeon 3200 hd. Anyone have any experience running WoW on any of these?

so.. she's going to take the desktop with her to college or you getting rid of it?

 

[DarthWoo]

Are all of the 9800 GTX cards as monstrous in size as the GTX 260? Tomshardware seems to hold the 9800 GTX at around equivalent to the 4850. I think I'm going to hold off on purchasing a card for a little bit, maybe until after I see how things look on the new monitor.

 

[madmook]

what are the latest drivers for Nvidia? have they come out yet?

???

The latest WHQL's are 185.85 (dated 05/06/09)

They've worked fine for me, used them on desktops and laptops.

 

[madmook]

Are all of the 9800 GTX cards as monstrous in size as the GTX 260? Tomshardware seems to hold the 9800 GTX at around equivalent to the 4850. I think I'm going to hold off on purchasing a card for a little bit, maybe until after I see how things look on the new monitor.

Yes, I believe they're all 10.5" long with dual-slot cooler/fans. But I remember reading a while back that the new GTS 250's (same thing as the 9800 GTX) with 1 gig of memory would be shorter, like 1 or 1.5 inches shorter... the first-run 512mb GTS 250's are still 10.5" or something. You'll have to do your own research.

 

[DarthWoo]

Yes, I believe they're all 10.5" long with dual-slot cooler/fans.

Good lord. Video cards these days almost make SuperKyro look believable.

 

[brain_stew]

Might the same card with 1GB of memory make much of a difference? I'm mainly hoping to get about the same FPS at 1920x1080 with a new card as I got at 1280x960 with the 9600 SSC at the same quality settings.

Edit: Also, since this will be my first widescreen display, how do they usually deal with applications that don't really support widescreen? Let's say I just want to start up an older game with no wide mode, but don't want to run it in a window, and also do not want it all stretched to hell.

No not really as it simply does not have the bandwidth to make use of that extra memory. You want a card with plenty memory bandwidth and a large framebuffer if you're to expect better 1080p performance.

 

[Hazaro]

I find that it's not too bad for most games at 1080p. It isn't ideal, you're right, but it's good enough to support my old axiom of "better to spend $100 now and $100 in a year than $200 now." I figure that if the 4770 is any indication, we're looking at a pretty good year of gains.

That's may take on the 4850.

Good lord. Video cards these days almost make SuperKyro look believable.

The 4850 is slightly shorter than the 4870 and GTX series.

If you are willing do hold off do it though.

 

[DarthWoo]

Looks like the EVGA GTX 250s are 9.5" long, which would just barely fit without kicking out my lower drive cage. Just how much memory bandwidth should I be aiming for? The 9600 SSC that I have claims to have 62.4GB/s, while the 250 I'm looking at has 71.8GB/s.

 

[Hazaro]

Looks like the EVGA GTX 250s are 9.5" long, which would just barely fit without kicking out my lower drive cage. Just how much memory bandwidth should I be aiming for? The 9600 SSC that I have claims to have 62.4GB/s, while the 250 I'm looking at has 71.8GB/s.

If you can't fit a full length card in I'd wait or crossfire 4850's if you are up for that.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

???

The latest WHQL's are 185.85 (dated 05/06/09)

They've worked fine for me, used them on desktops and laptops.

Okey-dook. thanks.

 

[larvi]

so.. she's going to take the desktop with her to college or you getting rid of it?

She's going to take the desktop to college and have that in the dorm room. She's worried about having something to play wow on when she comes home on weekends plus needing a laptop at school to take to classes. She definitely doesn't want a desktop replacement as it would be bulky to lug around. and will have a true desktop.

 

[Hazaro]

9800GT for just $66 folks!

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Games/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&sku=A2641028

Possible $20 rebate to bring it down to $46: :lol
http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFi...ickDeals&cm_mmc=AFC-SlickDeals-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA

 

[Gully State]

You might be able to build a gaming PC that performs better than a 360 at the arcade's price point if you can get the 9800GT at $46

 

[MWS Natural]

Finally got 5.1 working from the 4890 to my AVR after 2hrs working on it! For some reason in XP you have to install separate audio drivers than the ones that are included with Catalyst. I set my card back to auto fan after having a little bit of trouble setting up the fan profiles in rivatuner. The card is idling at 63 degrees with that fan set to 27%, that's about 10degree higher than normal right? Should I just set it back to 40% and leave it or invest in a PCI slot or VGA cooler?

Edit:

Hmm a VGA cooler replaces the one already on the card...?

 

[volt01]

She's going to take the desktop to college and have that in the dorm room. She's worried about having something to play wow on when she comes home on weekends plus needing a laptop at school to take to classes. She definitely doesn't want a desktop replacement as it would be bulky to lug around. and will have a true desktop.

From my experience, The biggest misconception about college is the whole you need a laptop thing. I very rarely take mine out of my room. The only classes I ever took it to were computer programming ones. So in all honesty, try and talk her out of the laptop. I think more than anything it's the cool factor, because for most people college is the first experience they have with laptops and they can't pass that up. That's how it was for me at least.

Also I've had two laptops break on me in as many years one dell and one hp, both had the motherboard break causing a loss of fan control so that the thing overheated. Luckily the hp was under warranty. However, now I can't justify building a gaming pc.

 

[DarthWoo]

9800GT for just $66 folks!

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Games/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&sku=A2641028

Possible $20 rebate to bring it down to $46: :lol
http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFi...ickDeals&cm_mmc=AFC-SlickDeals-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA

What is "Channel Wide"? Rebate form says that's the only valid place of purchase.

 

[Hazaro]

What is "Channel Wide"? Rebate form says that's the only valid place of purchase.

That's why I said it is only possible.
You can try if you want, but the price is already ridiculous.

 

[DarthWoo]

Think I'll wait and see if they ever manage to make smaller equivalents to the GTS 260. Really the only reason I feel like getting a new card is because I was afraid that playing games at less than native resolution would distort them so badly that they'd be unplayable, but I'm now hoping that a Samsung display should at least have some modicum of downscaling. What is the prognosis of there ever being a card equal in power to a GTS 260, but only 9-9.5" long, preferably not two slots thick, and less than $150?

 

[larvi]

From my experience, The biggest misconception about college is the whole you need a laptop thing. I very rarely take mine out of my room. The only classes I ever took it to were computer programming ones. So in all honesty, try and talk her out of the laptop. I think more than anything it's the cool factor, because for most people college is the first experience they have with laptops and they can't pass that up. That's how it was for me at least.

Also I've had two laptops break on me in as many years one dell and one hp, both had the motherboard break causing a loss of fan control so that the thing overheated. Luckily the hp was under warranty. However, now I can't justify building a gaming pc.

Thanks for the insight, I guess I'll hold off until we go for orientation in July and see what they say about laptops and typical use and then discuss it with her. If it turns out she really doesn't need one for classes and she's just concerned about having a computer when she comes home for weekends I can easily build her a WoW desktop for cheap. I've got a spare case/ps/hd/ram/8600GT/CRT laying around right now so pretty much all I would need is a mobo/cpu which I can pick up at Frys pretty cheap.

And yeah, I'm definitely concerned about breakage and theft so don't want to invest a lot in a laptop if I don't have to.

 

[Hazaro]

Think I'll wait and see if they ever manage to make smaller equivalents to the GTS 260. Really the only reason I feel like getting a new card is because I was afraid that playing games at less than native resolution would distort them so badly that they'd be unplayable, but I'm now hoping that a Samsung display should at least have some modicum of downscaling. What is the prognosis of there ever being a card equal in power to a GTS 260, but only 9-9.5" long, preferably not two slots thick, and less than $150?

The only game I've played non-native was Crysis at one 'step' below my normal and it looked pretty fine to me.

Worry about this stuff after you get the monitor.

When you can go for a new motherboard, CPU, and GPU :lol

 

[DarthWoo]

The only game I've played non-native was Crysis at one 'step' below my normal and it looked pretty fine to me.

Worry about this stuff after you get the monitor.

When you can go for a new motherboard, CPU, and GPU :lol

Ehh, I got a pretty decent motherboard that gives me a pretty fair amount of room for expansion. It was a P5Q Pro I got for relatively cheap last year, and I just have a dual core, so I can always upgrade that significantly.

I just thought of something, do most LCD displays let you just display something at a lower resolution, but only taking up the amount of space on the display that it would take up relative to native? What I mean is sort of like being in a window, except still at full screen, with just some borders, like with my earlier example of if I wanted to run something that didn't really support widescreen very well, but I didn't want it stretched out.

 

[Hazaro]

Ehh, I got a pretty decent motherboard that gives me a pretty fair amount of room for expansion. It was a P5Q Pro I got for relatively cheap last year, and I just have a dual core, so I can always upgrade that significantly.

I just thought of something, do most LCD displays let you just display something at a lower resolution, but only taking up the amount of space on the display that it would take up relative to native? What I mean is sort of like being in a window, except still at full screen, with just some borders, like with my earlier example of if I wanted to run something that didn't really support widescreen very well, but I didn't want it stretched out.

Few support 1:1 as an option.

I take it then your case isn't big enough?

 

[DarthWoo]

Few support 1:1 as an option.

I take it then your case isn't big enough?

My 9" 9600 GT SSC has about 1 inch of clearance from the back of a hard drive sitting in the lower drive cage. I could feasibly put both drives in the upper cage, but then it would be pretty much full with two hard drives and a floppy drive. I like to keep a bit of air between things in case of heating issues. This old card seemed huge at first with its enclosed cooling shell thingy; 10.5" video cards are just silly.

 

[Hazaro]

My 9" 9600 GT SSC has about 1 inch of clearance from the back of a hard drive sitting in the lower drive cage. I could feasibly put both drives in the upper cage, but then it would be pretty much full with two hard drives and a floppy drive. I like to keep a bit of air between things in case of heating issues. This old card seemed huge at first with its enclosed cooling shell thingy; 10.5" video cards are just silly.

Sounds like you have room.

 

[Zyzyxxz]

From my experience, The biggest misconception about college is the whole you need a laptop thing. I very rarely take mine out of my room. The only classes I ever took it to were computer programming ones. So in all honesty, try and talk her out of the laptop. I think more than anything it's the cool factor, because for most people college is the first experience they have with laptops and they can't pass that up. That's how it was for me at least.

Also I've had two laptops break on me in as many years one dell and one hp, both had the motherboard break causing a loss of fan control so that the thing overheated. Luckily the hp was under warranty. However, now I can't justify building a gaming pc.

I agree, laptops are just a distraction in the class, most of the time I just used it to slack of in class and lugging them to class is a pain too unless you get a ultra portable.

My recommendation would be to get a desktop and a nettop if you really need mobile computing.

 

[Minsc]

Looks like people who are interested in SSDs should try to get their hands on Windows 7, it boasts improved read/write speeds from the drives.

Traditional HDDs show no difference in speed between the two OSs. More here.

 

[brain_stew]

Finally got 5.1 working from the 4890 to my AVR after 2hrs working on it! For some reason in XP you have to install separate audio drivers than the ones that are included with Catalyst. I set my card back to auto fan after having a little bit of trouble setting up the fan profiles in rivatuner. The card is idling at 63 degrees with that fan set to 27%, that's about 10degree higher than normal right? Should I just set it back to 40% and leave it or invest in a PCI slot or VGA cooler?

Edit:

Hmm a VGA cooler replaces the one already on the card...?

Idle temps are nothing to worry about, you're using a SFF case so ofcourse its going to be a little toastier, it won't do any harm. So long as load temps are sub 100C, you've nothing to worry about, really as the card is designed to operate under such conditions. Try running Furmark's stability test and let us know what the temperature peaks at., if its below 100C then you'll likely never go above 0-C in normal gameplay and thus shouldn't be at all concerned about it.

Think I'll wait and see if they ever manage to make smaller equivalents to the GTS 260. Really the only reason I feel like getting a new card is because I was afraid that playing games at less than native resolution would distort them so badly that they'd be unplayable, but I'm now hoping that a Samsung display should at least have some modicum of downscaling. What is the prognosis of there ever being a card equal in power to a GTS 260, but only 9-9.5" long, preferably not two slots thick, and less than $150?

720p usually fairs decently on a 1080p panel. You should be able to setup your GPU to do the scaling for you as well, which will make it look rather decent.

Pretty much all decent cards are going to be two slotters, any real reason why you have this requirement?

Both the reference 4870 and 4890 are 9.5" long according to this review as well:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/graphics/review/2009/04/02/AMD-ATI-Radeon-HD-4890/p1

MWS could you measure the length of yours?

In which case I'd go with this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161276

A little over budget but worth every penny. This is a decent performance upgrade over the GTX 260, performing better than even a GTX 280 whilst having great OCing headroom.

 

[D4Danger]

brain_stew, just wanted to say thanks for the help yesterday.

My new card arrived this morning and I'm very happy with it.

 

[TheExodu5]

Ehh, I got a pretty decent motherboard that gives me a pretty fair amount of room for expansion. It was a P5Q Pro I got for relatively cheap last year, and I just have a dual core, so I can always upgrade that significantly.

I just thought of something, do most LCD displays let you just display something at a lower resolution, but only taking up the amount of space on the display that it would take up relative to native? What I mean is sort of like being in a window, except still at full screen, with just some borders, like with my earlier example of if I wanted to run something that didn't really support widescreen very well, but I didn't want it stretched out.

Do you mean having it being a small window inside the giant screen? Or do you mean having it stretched out, but not distort the native aspect ratio. If it's the latter, you can do this in the NVidia control panel by specifying to let the video card scale and to keep the original aspect ratio.

 

[brain_stew]

brain_stew, just wanted to say thanks for the help yesterday.

My new card arrived this morning and I'm very happy with it.

Excellent, which one did you go with in the end, the Gainward?

Its a beast isn't it? Be sure to get Mirror's Edge downloaded stat and crank it all the way up, PhysX effects and all, its bloody stunning.

Oh, and if you feel like OCing it, EVGA Precision makes it a doddle, these things have some serious headroom, and the cooler does a great job, loving mine, Its running at 702/1440/1160. Use Furmark or ATI Tool to stability test.