The thing about nVidia vs. ATI is you have to pick between raw speed (fps) or image quality. If you’re very picky about image quality, ATI is better. If you talk raw speed, for the most part nVidia is better, but it’s harder to claim that with the 4890. The ATI DX10 cards actually are DX10.1, while nVidias are just DX10. I forgot the exact difference, could check Tom’s Hardware when I get home, lol, but DX10.1 had some newer features that regular 10 didn’t support. But it’s pretty typical difference between their two mindsets. For ATI, they had to support the absolute latest while for nVidia they focused on squeezing out the most raw speed and decided as long as they can advertise DX10, then that’s “good enough.”

I mean, honestly, most people, myself included, will probably not notice the difference in image quality between the two, but for me the deciding factor was the SLi vs. Crossfire comparison. Crossfire has 2 advantages over SLi. First, the amount of increased performance by cross firing two ATI cards is proportionally more than SLi-ing two nVidia cards. Meaning if you put two identical ATI cards in crossfire configuration, you’ll probably get somewhere between 50-65% increase in gaming performance compared to having just one. While if you SLi two identical nVidia cards, you will get maybe 20-50% increase compared to having just one. At least that’s what I’ve noticed from most benchmarks.

Second advantage is that it’s more stable, SLi has been the cause of a lot of crashes reported to Microsoft, while Crossfire, not so much so…

For right now though, nVidia has one advantage over ATI, and that is the ability for one nVidia card to act as a PhysX processor. But that advantage won’t last long, someone has already written drivers to allow for an ATI card to be used, and it works, but it’s not official yet, probably licensing issues, but it won’t be long before ATI makes their own.

But before I got my 4890, I had an nVidia card that is still pretty good. But the 4890 went on sale and I couldn’t resist, lol.

Look, we took another thread hostage!

$800 is real close to being able to get you a near top of the line Core i7 gaming monster that will probably last you a good 5 years AT LEAST without needing an upgrade.

But I say wait until the next generation consoles to come out, because when those consoles come out, PC hardware will be about 1-2 generations ahead of the consoles, so you upgrade to that hardware and you’ll be 2 generations ahead of the consoles for the entire life of the consoles, lol.

I’m willing to bet your current PC is already ahead of the consoles, it’s not like they will be getting any upgrades anytime soon, so they’re stuck at the same level as when the console was first released. While you’re already ahead of them…

But if you REALLY want to play new games at all max settings so you’re not just ahead of the consoles but blowing them out of the freakin water, just get the ATI HD4890 video card. Their new 5000 series just came out, so I bet you’ll be able to find a lot of good deals on that one. That’s their top-of-the-line 4000 series card, and it’s damn fast…

But that upgrade alone will allow you to play new games for at least the next 2-3 years easy, most likely longer. And when the time comes and you want to upgrade, with this new age of Crossfire/SLi, you don’t replace your card, but you add on to it, so your speed kind of multiplies.

Despite it being more popular, I’m personally against SLi, I like Crossfire better, much more stable. SLi is less efficient and more unstable. Most of PC crashes as of late has been the result of errors due to SLi’ed video cards. I got this information from the error reports that get sent back to Microsoft whenever a computer crashes. The stats show that the majority of errors in the last year are because of that.

Macs are not even capable of this at all, so they don’t have this problem, lol.

But alas, Crossfire is much more stable and don’t have these problems, so you can have the benefit, AND not have to worry about stability issues, best of both worlds, lol.

Thats an interesting process that does look like it minimizes the dust build up on the PC. Well I’m sold… when I do scrounge up enough cash to purchase my next PC I think I’ll just look you up and have you build it for me.. You ok with that? My price range would most likely be like 500-800 bucks if you could work with that. Let me know, I’m real interested

One thing I do and always recommend, is a way to keep the inside of your almost completely PC dust free. A lot of cases offer an air filter in the front main fan, and that helps a lot, but dust still gets in through the cracks and other openings. What I do is I actually modify the case so that there is more air moving into the case through fans than air getting sucked out. This means getting rid of the fan on the back sucking air out. The reason for this is, when there are fans sucking air out of the case, the air has to move in from somewhere, and that’s usually through cracks and many uncontrolled openings. By having at least 3 large (quieter) 120mm fans all moving air into the case, your case is over pressurized so air is moving OUT of all of the cracks. So now you can control the airflow into your case. I then install these aluminum mesh filters, not that crappy foam filters you see so often, over these intake fans. These filters catch just about all dust except the very fine stuff which doesn’t clog up your heatsinks and fans inside your computer as fast. And since the filters are aluminum, cleaning them is easy, remove the filter, wash the filter, dry it with a paper napkin, then reinstall them, easy as pie.

I’ve had this setup on my PC for over a year now and when you look inside, there is barely any dust in any of the heatsinks or anything. This keeps component temperatures down significantly. But yah, it’s kind of “advanced” for most since it involves actually cutting into your case since most cases only have room for 2 fans and one of them, the one in back, CANNOT be turned into an intake fan since it’ll suck in the warm air being sucked out of the power supply. So in reality, typical cases only allow for one intake fan on the front of the case, and that one is usually hard to install the filter I speak of. So I cut two holes on the left side for two 120mm fans, and one on the right side. My friend got creative and cut two holes on the TOP of his case, so the filters are sitting right on top so when he wants to clean them, he simply unscrews them, lifts them off, cleans them, then reinstalls them. Pretty good idea actually, the side ones require me to get on the floor to unscrew them, he can do it from his seat, lol. Lazy ass…

I should start modifying cases with this setup and selling them on ebay… Interested at all?? lol. If you are, let me know, pick out a case you like and I can hook you up without charging you actual profit, just enough to cover my expenses of buying the case, fans, filters, then shipping it. Since you’re a fellow PC gamer.

Don’t mind the crappy case I bought from newegg for $10 during black friday one year, lol. I think must have been 2004 or so, since I reused the case for my current setup which is a bit over 3 years old now, so the case is a few years older than that.
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h12/demon_mustang/dustfreepc01.jpg
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h12/demon_mustang/dustfreepc02.jpg

Well said buddy, that sounds like real creative stuff you do on your PC. I wish I knew more about film editing I’d love to get into that. But hey my PC still comes in handy for gaming

But hey, what do I know, my friend and I are only partners in a small business run from home fixing, upgrading, building, and misc. technology services for computers, ipods, mp3 players, digital cameras, etc. etc. I’m about to quit my crappy job at the hospital to do that computer business full time.

But hey, you have your opinions, I have mine, so go ahead and keep ignoring everything that I’ve said. I think I’ve been pretty fair for both sides, I simply prefer the PC. But if you look at my analogy, I didn’t say Macs are crappy like some old Chavelle, I think they are functional BASIC computers that are perfect for some people, but nothing more. But I need more than just a basic computer for browsing the internet, typing documents, imaging, and stuff like that, so that’s why I prefer the PC because it can do much more than just that.

Owning a computer for one year is nothing. Considering that my main PC is over 3 years old, my server computer is over 5, maybe even over 6 years old, and it’s still functioning perfectly, and my friend’s MAIN PC that he’s using to game even now is over 4 and a half years old…

But it’s fine, I’m done too. I sincerely hope you enjoy using your Mac. As long as I’m not forced to use one as my main computer, it’s perfectly fine by me.

(Oh, if you are a smoker, hopefully not, but make sure you don’t smoke around your Mac, because Apple has adopted a new policy where if you send in your Mac for a problem and they smell cigarette smoke on your computer they will refuse to fix it even if you bought the extended warranty. So just a friendly heads up.)

Dude, whatever. I’m 48, so I’ve been around since before personal PCs even existed. I’ve always owned PCs and they’ve ALWAYS been twitchy, overly complicated and prone to problems/failure. I’d say that’s a Microsoft problem more than a hardware problem, but regardless, it’s a package deal.

Mac, not a single issue in the close to one year I’ve owned.

But hey, feel free to ignore this along with everything else I’ve said from a lifetime of experience with PCs.

I’m done with this, no point.

Vic

Oops, I just read over what I typed, first of all, I meant “get” not “gate” don’t know why I typed that… Must be my horrible PC, needs tweaking…

And secondly, I wrote that I’ve been editing movies, I don’t mean like I’m editing movies as a profession, because that’s kind of how it sounds… I just mean editing movie clips for my website. Just some minor effects here and there, redubbing the sound and stuff like that… Really, just some minor stuff, so no real need or experience with any of these more powerful movie editing programs.

I do a lot of photoshopping and lightroom II to process RAW photos and stuff. Sometimes when I’m bored I go back and find photos and photoshop things like if someone had their eyes closed, I photoshop them open using other photos, or I photoshop out bunny ears, remove, or sometimes add moles and other marks, etc.. Then I will send them the photo and tell them I photoshopped something and ask them to spot it, lol.

Hey, I’ve NEVER denied what Macs are good for. The one thing Mac, well, Apple in general, is extremely good at is appearance. Their operating system is very flashy and “cool.” Same with the interface you gate with their mp3 players, oh, sorry, “ipods.” Yes, they are very simple to use. I mean, two buttons on a mouse, why over complicate things???

Seriously though, that’s why if I were to use a car analogy, they would be the Toyota Camry. Anyone can sit in a Camry and know how to drive it. But maybe a stick shift V8 Mustang might be a bit intimidating for some, and for those who don’t do it right, they will start grinding down the synchronizers on every gear everytime they go to shift, lol. But there’s nothing wrong with the Toyota Camry if you’re satisfied with that. I mean, I didn’t say Carolla, I said Camry, the high-class Toyota, the one that’s all upgraded, leather seats, auto doors and windows, climate control, oh yah. Not an insult, just differences in what you want out of your car, or in this case, your computer.

I didn’t touch my computer for 3 whole years. Then recently I decided to change my video card because the 4890’s went on sale getting ready for their new 5000 series cards. So I thought, heck, why not? It’s not because it NEEDED it, like I was like “oh, my PC sucks, I wish I had a Mac” before, I simply WANTED to upgrade it, so I did. If you WANTED or even NEEDED to upgrade your Mac, you’d have to buy a whole new one, lol.

And about the movie editing program, that’s just a program. There are many programs exclusive for Mac, but that doesn’t mean those are the only programs that can do those things. There are plenty of movie editing programs available for the PC. And most of them are FAR cheaper than Final Cut…

HOWEVER, I do have to admit that while I have been doing movie editing for quite some time, I am not doing anything serious enough to require a program like Final Cut, so I can’t say from personal experience what features it has or doesn’t have.

BUT since you brought it up, you should look up on youtube a video clip from a Discovery Channel documentary covering some people making a short film and was doing it on a Mac and the Mac crashed when they tried to save the final edited version and it actually corrupted the file and they lost the whole movie, lol. I feel bad for them, but still kind of hilarious…

Anyway Fenix, I guess you and I will have to keep “suffering” with our PC’s weeping while we play the newest and prettiest games with all settings on high at higher resolutions and higher framerates from the comfort of our computer chairs… *sobs* lol

I don’t get that at all. Have you somehow missed the part about how my PC is over 3 years old? How is that “continuously” tweaking and mixing and matching?? LOL.

If I didn’t need to game on it, I won’t need to change anything on my PC for WELL over that.

Hell, I have an old PC from well over 6 years ago that I can dust off, plug in, and will be able to do everything a current Mac can do… The only thing that can’t do is play current games, but a Mac is never able to play any game made more recent than 15 years ago… lol, just kidding!!!

My friend just called me to ask me to build him another computer. I asked him what computer he’s using figuring he bought another one since the last time I built a computer for him which was about 5 years ago, and he told me it’s still that one… He’s STILL using the computer I’ve built for him FIVE YEARS AGO, and even then it wasn’t top-of-the-line, and he says it’s fine, just need more harddrive space and newer games run choppy on it… Yah, talk about “continuous” tweaking… HAHA

If you want to use cars as an analogy, here’s a better one.

A PC is like a new V8 Mustang, and a Mac is like a new Toyota Camry. One is more capable while the other is more comfy for people who don’t know much about cars. The new V8 Mustang has a million aftermarket parts available if you want to supe it up, but a lot of those aftermarket parts are crap so you’ll need to know what is good to get. So a lot of people who get the cheap crappy parts end up messing up their car. While the Toyota Camry, the only parts you can really buy for it are Toyota parts, and most owners of Camry’s don’t do any of the work themselves, they pay more to bring it into the dealer to have them do it. But no matter what you really do to it, you’ll never match the speed and capability of the Mustang, but it’ll always be comfy and nice for those who are not really into cars. That’s a better one in my opinion.

I have an older Mustang. I was actually able to convert it from an automatic into a manual transmission by myself, I do all my own oil changes, swapped out the stock exhaust pipes with an “off-road” one with no catalytic convertors (my state doesn’t do emissions testing, lol), I do my own tune-ups, I put in a new intake, and several other things. Give me a Toyota Camry and I’ll look at you with a confused look, not to mention a complete lack of desire to work on it or drive it for that matter. Pretty much how I feel about the PC vs. Mac thing… My Mustang ran fine before I did anything to it, anything I CHOOSE to do on it is to improve it, not to “fix” anything. Same with my PC. My PC would be perfectly fine if I left it alone for 5 years or more. But I want to improve it. While with a Mac, you basically throw it in the garbage when it’s outlived its time and you simply spend a ton more money to buy another one to replace it.

That’s a pretty good analogy. I’m going to use that.

If you WANT to spend time tweaking, tuning, customizing a box, mixing and matching components, etc. – then you’re the Chevelle guy.

Me, I’m the Porsche guy: I just want the car to do what it’s supposed to do with a minimum of trouble and with high performance.

To me a computer is a tool, not a fun thing to spend time working on. I just want it to run the programs I want, browse the web quickly, not have a lot of problems, etc.

With a PC I felt I was ALWAYS dealing with some B.S. issue or another. With a Mac I get my work done and the computer is transparent to the process.

Vic

So basically buying a Mac is almost like buying a video game console. Theres not much room for upgrade but everything but its just easier for the casual person to set up.

There is one thing however that you can do on a Mac but NOT on a PC. It’s for film editing but its called Final Cut I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Now I know you can get Mac emulators for the PC but I’m not the type to mess with that. As far as I know its a really advanced video editing tool that is wicked expensive that is exclusively on a Mac. I might be totally wrong and they already have a PC version but if I’m right put that in your pipe and smoke it Ken J

Forget all of the anti-virus, anti-blah blah crap. The ONLY program you will need is Kaspersky Anti-Virus (NOT Internet Security) and you’ll be fine. I use my PC ALL the time, for EVERYTHING. I leave it on for months at a time and has never experienced a crash or been infected with anything other than the occasional spyware which is easy to get rid of. KAV catches everything else and is pretty unobtrusive. Norton is crap, Mcafee is crap, Kaspersky is the only program that actually works. But the best way to not get infected? Keep your Windows up to date and don’t go to questionable websites. I’m about to turn my PC off for the first time in 3 months just to clean my air filters, then it’s back on again.

I know you didn’t really say this, but I was really hoping for M-Cat to mention the commonly accepted myth that Macs can’t be infected by viruses (virii??? lol). The truth is, they are just as easily infected as anything else. The only difference is that 95% of computers in households and businesses are PC’s, and virus makers want their “work” to spread, so basically, they don’t write them for Macs because they don’t care to. But once they become the majority, don’t worry, you guys won’t be left behind. But funny thing is, just to prove a point, several people have made viruses for Macs just to prove they are not magically immune. But like I said, the only way you will get infected is if you have idiot friends sending you chain emails with infected attachments, or for some reason your computer is targeted by a hacker, you get infected by a trojan which you can only get from accidentally downloading it, etc. etc. I am on my computer all the time, no problems what-so-ever. Can’t tell you the namebrand though since I built it myself. When you get those Dells and what-not, you have no clue what kind of garbage they use to build them…

@M-Cat

Uhhh, actually I have. And I do know the differences. The difference is that a PC is a PC with Windows, a Mac is a PC with Mac OS. Go ahead and open up your Mac and tell me who makes all of the hardware in them. Hm, Intel CPU, that sounds familiar. Even their motherboards use Intel chipsets, go look at your motherboard’s northbridge and southbridge and tell me what super familiar logo you see on them, lol!! Oh, but the Mac OS is so flashy and cool looking! Oh yah, how did you like the new Mac OS, Leopard was it? Did you like its super convenient “speed up my Mac” feature when you upgraded to it? As in that it wipes out all of your data?? LOL

I almost felt bad as I laughed in my friend’s face when that happened to his Mac… I wouldn’t have laughed if he didn’t just tell me how superior it was right before he installed it and found that all of his stuff was gone… Oh we both had tears in our eyes, but his was from sadness, lol. Yah, I’m kind of an a-hole that way, but he’s the same way about PC when someone’s computer is all messed up. Unfortunately for him he hasn’t found the opportunity to rag on mine since the last time I had an issue with my PC was some bad DIMMS from Crucial… But replaced them with Kingston HyperX and no issues since. (other than my power source getting fried in that lightning storm a few months ago ) Hopefully I don’t jynx myself and my computer crashes like right now…

I still can’t find anyone who can name me just ONE thing that I need to do on my computer that a Mac can do that my Windows based PC can’t. So basically buying a Mac (for me) will be paying more for a fancier looking OS that can do the same things my PC can already do but without the games. Great… Just what I’ve always needed… BTW, yes I do movie, picture, and sound editing with my PC, mainly for my website.

I understand where you guys are coming from though since I have friends that spend like 1/10 the time I do on the computer and they get infected by everything known to man… I have no clue how they manage this… One of my friends spends more time on his computer than me and he doesn’t have any problems either!

Trust me M-Cat, if I’m suffering by using the PC, I’ll go find an alternative. I’m too lazy to go out of my way to continuously fix problems and do whatever just so I can defend my computer. If it gave me problems and there’s no easy solution, I’ll seek something better. But literally, I don’t experience any problems, I play games, I go online, I watch movies on my HDTV through my PC via HDMI output and a HD-DVD/Blu Ray combo drive I bought for my PC, I do work on excel, word, powerpoint, I do movie editing, I process a lot of RAW format photos, I do a lot of image editing, sound editing, I LOVE my computer, it hasn’t failed me yet. That’s why I am always laughing at all of these myths about how unstable a Windows computer is…

The main problem with PC’s is that there’s no standard. A lot of people buy cheapy motherboards, cheapy memory, cheapy everything, and they wonder why their computer doesn’t work right. Corrupt memory blocks on cheap memory is a very common cause for those blue screen errors that are so infamous. I ONLY buy Corsair or Kingston memory. I ONLY buy Asus motherboards, and I used to only buy Seagate harddrives, but now they are being made in China and are complete garbage. But you see, the casual PC user won’t know how to determine these things. That’s why I don’t buy Dell, HP, or whatever, because I don’t know what they use. Well, HP uses Asus motherboards, so that’s cool, lol. But maybe they are using cheapy memory and cheapy harddrives, who knows… See, cheap motherboards use low quality capacitors, it will work fine for the first few months, maybe the first year, then they will start to bloat and fail, and that results in power fluctuations in the system, which causes errors and crashes. Crappy memory, like I’ve stated, with corrupt memory blocks will cause crashes when your computer attempts to access those blocks. Crappy harddrives will also cause errors and crashes. There are so much of these cheapy crappy hardware out there, it’s no wonder so many people experience problems with PC’s. Is it a problem inherent to the PC platform? Not at all. While Mac is one company, you basically have no options with them, they choose the mobo, cpu, and memory they put in their computers, then they install their operating system. So obviously the quality control will be higher since they basically oversee it all, while PC’s, there are like 50 name brands that make everything, most of them crappy… Then there’s such a huge selection of software that is compatible with Windows, a lot of those are garbage too… People install all kinds of garbage on their computers, then they run to me crying about how slow it is. Then you look at the task manager and there is like 200 programs running… WTF??? lol. But what do I know… *sigh*

But poor ol me will be stuck with my “super unstable” PC that hasn’t crashed once in the past YEAR even though I leave it on for 2 months at a time before I shut it down to clean the filters. Yes, I slacked this last month, and it’s going onto 3 months now, my filters have dust like caked on them…

BTW M-Cat, if you don’t mind cutting into your computer case, I know the best way to keep a dust free computer, meaning no more dust caked in between the fins in your CPU heatsink and in the fan on your video card, only dust on external filters that are easy to wash and clean. I’ve had this setup on my PC for over a year and if you look on the inside, only a very fine film of dust, almost nothing, it’s pretty sweet.

you have obviously never used a Mac or gave it the time to try it out or else you would know the differences. sometimes ken you believe your own words so much that your blind to the truth. try listening to other people sometimes and have an open mind.

I can tell you this – I used PCs my entire life and this year bought a MacBook. Macs are FAR simpler to use but the MAJOR advantage is no technical problems. Been running this Mac for almost a year now with NO anti-spyware, anti-virus, anti-anything on it and I’ve not had one. single. problem.

My work PC, where they block tons of sites and even on unblocked ones I don’t visit anything “questionable” I got an infection so bad that the PC tech after multiple attempts had to just take it away and wipe the drive. My last laptop, a Dell, got so infected I tried about a half dozen different apps to clean it, and nothing worked. It’s dead, in my closet.

I had a PC rebuilt recently to replace my older PC in my home office which I rarely use. I can tell you my next desktop purchase will be a Mac.

Vic

Oh I can’t wait for the myths to fly!

You do realize that Apple doesn’t even make hardware anymore right? If you buy a Mac now, it’s an overpriced PC with the Mac OS installed. If you didn’t know that then…

It’s become a stamp of coolness and nothing more. OOoooohhhh well.