here, it's $20 more :) 

and I dont have vista, so dx10 is out of the picture for now. 

 

Its a fucking good card!!! I run Crysis in 1280x1024 with the dx9 very high hack, 0xAA and its pretty fast!

Everything else runs at that resolution at 60fps+ when maxed out on details.

But the 9800GTX is gonna run Crysis faster, it's more future proof and for $20 I would say it's worth it!

If you really want future proof though then get a 9800 GX2. Those things are mean! >:-\ 

there might be a slight misunderstanding, I wasn't trying to ridicule console users or computer illiterate persons.

I think we are basically saying the same thing. Notice how I said I can understand how console gaming is more accessible, and that _that_ isn't bad. I also said that the era of teenage computer mechanics passed.

:-) you're right. There. But I'm not buying a TV. I wouldn't want to pay a de facto TV tax (Germany, sigh) when I only play some console games and watch DVDs. 

Gb

Heh, OK, that's cool. Hey, sorry about getting so hyper in this thread. Some subjects push my buttons and I sometimes lose sight of the goal - mapping and having fun.

I'm not here to disrupt the community, I'm here to participate. Let me get back to my remix map. :P 

UK top 10 http://kotaku.com/391939/british-sales-charts

NPD PC chart (no numbers tho) http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/872/872243p1.html?RSSwhen2008-05-07_145500&RSSid=872243

some revenue stats from Activision report
Segment/Platform Mix
Publishing:
Console $1,683,204
Hand-held 192,557
PC 115,870
( http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=%20292694 )

~15x times... these guys have the bestselling PC title - cod4 (#1 PC game in units and dollars in the U.S. and Europe for the quarter ended December 31, 2007)

meanwhile AMD http://game.amd.com/us-en/default.aspx 

games still sell as well as they did before, it's just that there are these non-games (sims, wow, brain training) on top of that.

But since games cost more and more to make nowadays it's not feasible to continue advancing the state of the art in pc games. 

Depends what you call "normal games" but CoD4, Halo, and GoW probably fall into that category, and they all sold ridiculously well.

Games cost more and more, but sales are going up alongside that (on consoles anyways), so it slightly evens out probably.

It's not because the graphics are much better that the games are so much longer/harder to make. That's probably true on a large scale, but you can't ignore the fact that the production tools and workflows have also much improved, making content creation easier/faster. 

In Russia
#384 posted by Speeds [78.37.31.230] on 2008/05/20 12:20:49
you have to be a car mechanic if you own a russian car :)

My first car was a late 70's model Mustang. A lot of real shit came off the assembly lines of Detroit at that time, and it didn't help that I bought it when it had over a hundred thousand miles on the odometer. I would find myself getting up early in the morning working under the hood just so I could go to school. 

are my eyes lying or have you turned slightly pink?

I thought Lada was actually a reasonably reliable car because of its simplicity. Though not as reliable as modern ones. 

Oh no, not at all. I blame Detroit troubles entirely on UAW decadence. Even today, it is impossible for the Big Three to retool plants for modern models without the exhorted cost of union hassles that make doing so unprofitable.

Or do you mean the car being girlie? I 'fess that is true, but then again it was given to me by my older sister. That car was a bright orange, flamboyant pumpkin that looked like it could have fallen out of George Clinton's hair. Possibly, the gayest thing on four wheels. 

if video card's busted, should rest of boot process be as normal or will it actually stop boot process? 

usually the mobo has some lights and it does some beeps during the boot process, you can decipher them with the mobo manual. No display card, no boot device are at least where it stops and shows some lights and beeps so many times.

But I dunno with the stuff nowadays, why would you need a display card for a box you can ssh to? 

disable the pci/agp slot mama and turn on the built-in video card if your motherboard has one (do they all have one?) and it should work. thats what i did when i killed my video card. :)

for me, pc froze before going into windows, but my brother told me i should turn off the pci-e slot, since i just had connected the monitor to the built-in video card, or something like that. i cant remember. :(

still, turning off the pci-e slot, made the problem go away.

i was saving for a new motherboard and a new video card, but i spent the money on ps2 and games for it :) 

I installed Vista as my main (and only) OS on my home desktop and I keep on finding some really nifty thing:

I was wondering why Vista took a very long time to shutdown, so I keep browsing Control Panel and I noticed the "Performance Information and Tools => Advanced Tools" part, when I opened it, it automatically highlighted an issue: "These programs are causing Windows to shutdown slowly: CTXFISPI.EXE, Vendor: Creative. Time Taken: 95,1 seconds". Whoa, nice. 

Sorry to come back to this whole PC dying thing, but here's an interview with Doug Lombardi that was posted on the shack earlier that was kind of interesting:
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=873

Obviously it's Valve, so you can't really be sure he's not slighly biased, as it'd be silly for him to claim pc gaming is dead, but it's still a nice read. 

Valve would never say that because of Steam. It would be be, frankly, retarded of them. :) 

bunch of the great hi-profile titles are made/published by "first party" - thats right - nintendo and sony themselves. And they stay exclusive and have zero chance of coming out on a PC

Lombardi tells how it is.
Miserable retail sales in USA (and consider no PC sales in Japan). And that means what? ~60-70% of the market would ignore your game by default if it comes out just on a PC.
Popcap and Blizzard enjoys great sales. And that means what?..

some1 find the sales numbers from steam 

Planning to get a video card soon to replace my dusty old 7900 GT. Lookin @ a 9600 or possibly 9800 or what not, up to $500.00 max, preferably less. Just wanted to know your guys' opinion(s). 

IMHO

But if you can manage a wee bit more then get a GX2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

� name, clockspeed - - - - - - - - value/ performance /price
01. 8800 GT 512MB, 600/1512/1800- 1351 1123 205
02. 9600 GT 512MB, 650/1625/1800- 1330 1041 180
03. 8800 GS 384MB, 680/1674/1600- 1151 964 193
04. 8800 GTS 512MB, 650/1620/1940 -1097 1194 279
05. HD 3870 512MB, 850/850/2380 -1089 1047 227
06. HD 3850 256MB, 670/670/1660 -1066 860 166
07. HD 3870 512MB, 775/775/2250 -976 989 226
08. HD 3850 512MB, 720/720/1800 -971 938 210
09. HD 3650 256MB, 725/725/1600 -714 513 95
10. HD 2600 XT 256MB, 800/800/1400 -713 484 86
11. 9800 GTX 512MB, 675/1688/2200 -706 1224 450
12. HD 2600 PRO 256MB, 700/700/1400 -695 455 75
13. 8600 GTS 256MB, 720/1440/2200 -691 597 132
14. HD 3870 X2 2x512MB, 825/825/1800 -689 1260 484
15. HD 2600 XT 256MB, 800/800/2200 -636 536 116
16. HD 2600 PRO 256MB, 600/700/1000 -636 420 65
17. 8600 GT 256MB, 560/1120/1560 -631 485 90
18. 8800 GTX 768MB, 575/1350/1800 -613 1197 495
19. 8500 GT 256MB, 450/900/800 -576 385 54
20. 9800 GX2 2x512MB, 600/1512/2000 -548 1382 757
21. HD 2400 XT 256MB, 700/700/1600 -545 348 50
22. 8800 Ultra 768MB, 612/1512/2160 -438 1260 757
23. HD 3870 X2 CF 4x512, 825/825/1800- 431 1505 968 

"pc games are doing well because popcap, valve, and id are going strong?"

that's like saying the economy must be doing well since david beckham has a good salary. 

Then why are those 3 companies also producing console titles? :) 

Because they can make additional money like that. I'm not disputing that console games sell better at this time, but suppose that the markets were equally profitable. Then it would still make sense to market products to both industries because it's almost certainly cheaper to port something from one to the other than to develop something from scratch. So it's unfair to try and claim that them developing for both is evidence they couldn't survive without the console market.