ok one thing to keep in mind is that when u use SLI or crossfire, you don't get to use the memory from both cards, just the GPU's.. even if u had 3 512MB videocards in your computer crossfired, u'd still only have 512mb allocatable texture memory...

and weather u choose ATI or nvidia it makes no difference, but look at more than a few reviews and benchmarks for all cards within your price range...

unlike a bad movie, that a review said was good... videocard reviews with solid benchmarking in multiple games/appz (because its not just showing you factory specs for the card, its showing you real world performance) will give you a good idea as to how fast the videocard you want to buy is compared to others in the same price range, so long as you remember, a Pentium 4 with 256MB system ram is not fast enough for a modern videocard... if your going to buy a high end videocard, the rest of your system has to be faster than it to make full use of it. i'd say no less than a core2@3GHz with 4GB system memory (i don't know what the AMD equivalent is) for a HD5850/280GTX (just an example)

S!

This pic has been circulating various places, outbursts of laughs everywhere regardless which brand the user prefers. To lighten up the gloomy wait of TD 4.10 :D

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/4531/thermi.jpg

Yeah,thats a joke,but this is real :S
http://img.techpowerup.org/100326/Capture598.jpg
http://hardocp.com/images/articles/1...gJ5ZxI_7_3.png

lol thats damn funny, question tho... can't a card be designed to run at higher temps? or is a given rule that hardware has to be below a certain "acceptable" temperature no matter what its was designed to take?

Edit: I use a HD5850, so temperature problems aren't really a problem, just curiousity is the problem :P

S!

There are certain thresholds electronics and such can take. Looking at the fighterplane equipment, the cooling mechanism is VERY efficient and even more so if the equipment is sensitive to overheat, like a computer array would be for example.

The higher the temperatures the higher the resistance, the more power required to make it work. If the temps get too high they stop working.

It's a bit of a vicious circle. In general cooler is better.

S!

The addy told a lot but this graph even more ;) :-D

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/1957/gpuo.png

S~ nearmiss. As it turns out, my wife's PC has the Asus vk264h monitor. It's 1900x1080. I thought I might buy one for me. It has 2ms response time, and fairly rich colors (deep blacks, imo) Plus the price is dropping all the time. Several months ago we paid $219.00 for her monitor. Asus has a 27 inch monitor with the same resolution with 2ms as well. Pixels are going to be bigger, I think, but that makes bandits easier to see, I hope! :D
Flyby out

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I'm dismayed that the 5850 does so poorly in Flanker35M's graph. :( But I want to see which of these cards does best at making ice cream! ;) BTW, does anyone think either of these cards will be overkill for SoW?
Flyby out