out of the game, time to upgrade?
14 weeks since my last post. . .Is posting nothing better than posting worthless crap? I've been on facebook in an attempt to find people who go to the same community college as I do, or at least live in the general area, but to no avail. So that's where I've been.
Lately I've found myself skirting the edge of minimum requirements for computer ( Read more... )
Lately I've found myself skirting the edge of minimum requirements for computer ( Read more... )
Gamers don't like Vista, thus game developers are going to be slow to phase out DX9 support. Hell, even now, most games are backwards-compatible with DX7 . . .
The truth about Vista: A modern machine can handle it with no noticeable drop in performance. From XP to Vista, my Battlefield 2 framerates dropped from around 100FPS to just under 70FPS. FEAR went from 60-ish to 47. Bioshock runs just over 35FPS. We can't discern framerates over 30FPS, so what's the big deal?
You'll have to upgrade to it eventually, so why not just start with it so you'll never have a negative point of comparison?
About Vista 64 - buggy, compatibility problems, etc . . . but you already know this story from running XP 64, right?
Yes! That is certainly an option, but on-board sound is on-board sound - it's prone to cross-talk from nearby circuits. Granted, a digital connection helps to combat that, but it's still there. Some motherboards now ship with their on-board sound isolated on a proprietary PCI-like card. They're actually pretty awesome & comparable to the rubbish that Creative sells for a hefty markup.
You could also pick up a sound card made by Turtle Beach with S/PDIF optical. They made a pretty good one for under 30 bucks earlier this year . . . might still be around.
Asus also makes a beast of a sound card for $170, but that's probably more than your CPU or GPU budgets on this build . . .
Asus + nForce North Bridge = goodness. The nForce 500 and nForce 650 North Bridges are probably the best available right now and ensure a stable board with good overclocking potential.
That's still about a year out. HDMI-OUT availability is spotty even today, so once that gets adopted over component Y/Pb/Pr HD, HDMI-IN is logically the next step. By 2009, all cards featuring VIVO (video-in, video-out) will have to comply with the new all-digital standard, so it'll definitely come before that.
However, an LCD monitor supporting HDCP should be able to display the signal using an HDMI-to-DVI adaptor, given that the cable box has on-board resolution controls that support the non-standard resolutions that most LCD monitors use.
If nothing else, HD tuners are under $100 and can pull in HD cable channels. I used one at my apartment to do just that!
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