Ben's Bargains

[Ben]

Newegg has the EVGA 01G-P3-1280-TR GeForce GTX 280 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI-E Video Card for $240 - $20 off with coupon code VGASALE10 - $20 rebate [Exp 6/30] = $200 with free shipping. Features a 602 MHz core clock and a 2214 MHz memory clock.

Click Here

[durkzilla]

Good price, the GeForce 280's were around $270 just a couple weeks ago...

[Zorak]

All graphics cards will be on sale with ever lower prices for the next 3 or 4 months, because this fall Win 7 and DX 11 comes to town. Also the newer 40nm die shrink will up performance and cut power/heat requirements, TSMC says they'll have the kinks out by August. AMD/ATI is supposedly going to have their DX 11 cards ready in Sept./Oct. (Win 7 rolls out 10/22), NVIDIA on the other hand won't have DX 11 until 2010. So the green machine will have to cut prices to keep customers, but they'll lose the high end. Rumors are that DX 11 is as big an upgrade as DX 9. If so then AMD/ATI will be in a good spot for Christmas season and NVIDIA will be out in the cold staring in the window.

But for those of us who aren't intensive gamers there will be some powerful cards for sale at low prices.

[Blinkdog]

How do you know Nvidia won't have DX 11 cards until 2010?

And what do you think the probability is for MS to actually have Win 7 out by holiday 2009?

[dave_c]

DX11 won't matter until there are DX11 games, and for online benchmark geeks, good performance in DX11 mode.

'Till then, you might as well hold off on long term DX11 thinking as there's always something better just around the corner.

[CompWiz17]

#3: actually, there have been stories running about that on many tech news sites.

here's a couple you can read over:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/6/24/nvidia-gt300---geforce-gtx-380-yields-are-sub-3025.aspx

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1052025/gt300-delayed-till-2010

They could launch a DX11 card very late in the year, but it would be essentially a paper launch, with very little availability for a few months. They haven't gotten their manufacturing kinks out yet. And, if they did that, they'd be losing money on each card. Really, I doubt that we'll be seeing anything DX11 from nVidia before 2010.

ATI has already demonstrated a working DX11 card, so they'll definitely have them out for the Windows 7 launch.

As for the Windows 7 launch, that seems pretty much set in stone. It will be October 22nd.

[CompWiz17]

[mike_storm777]

i'm still waiting for the AGP version. they promised me a launch sometime around next y

[benzachink]

Can I really even notice any improvements with this card over my ATI radeaon 4830?

I do like nvidia more, I don't know why.

ANy comments on the upgrade?

Thanks!

[CheezWhiz17]

[Zorak]

#8 Yes this card is a step up from the 4830. Still both cards are yesterdays technology, if you're a gamer then I'd hold out for the Christmas special season and read the new reviews. If your not a big gamer then this is a powerful card from a very good company in EVGA at a great price.

#9 I do agree that NVIDIA has better drivers for GAMING. They work a little harder at it (of course that used to be different and ATI had better drivers, then the pendulum swung to the green side, now ATI seems to be putting forth a bit more effort, likely the fact that their 4000 series cards are hits are helping that effort).

[Zorak]

#3 Microsoft could likely launch Win 7 TODAY, I've run both the Win 7100 build and currently running the Win 7229 (both 64 bit) on an AMD Phenom II 740 BE and 8 GB of ram. The system is very stable and mature, but then it ought to be, it is what Vista SHOULD have been at launch. It's Vista fixed and enhanced (well everywhere except they did away with the show desktop button, morons). If a program, device or driver works on Vista then it'll work on Win 7.

The reason that MS is waiting until October is twofold, one they HAVE to be SURE that Win 7 will be a hit, the Vista backlash kept nearly all Fortune 1000 companies from upgrading their OS and that's where a large amount of MS profits come. So MS needs Win 7, especially the 64 bit version, to be a hit so that they can sell the corporate world on a 64 bit upgrade path.

The 2nd reason is that MS is working with the PC guys to drive sales for the Christmas season.

[Vic_Romano]

#11, I'm pretty sure you can add the desktop button if you're so retarded you can't "Windowskey + D"

[Shazz]

#3,

As #11 says, Win7 is pretty damn good (running Build 7100). Also, I've read that DX11 is supposedly backwards compatible to DX9. I guess they are carrying the DX9 and DX10 API into DX11. However, when I installed and COD4 on my machine, I had to explicity install DX9 also. Theorectiaclly, each Dx version is separate and does not step on each other.

I have a question: should I update the (350W) power supply on my Dell Dimension 8400 to facilitate graphics card upgrading or should I take the (more expensive) route of buying/building a new gaming machine?

[Zorak]

#12 You're the retarded one, or either very, very immature. Make you feel big and tough to call someone retarded on the internet. Yep, can't wait for someone to make a filter for idiots.

And yes I know about the Win + D key, and yes there is a WORK AROUND for the show desktop, but it's not the exactly the same. When something isn't broken you don't fix it. Also Win 7 made it harder to open multiple windows for Firefox (or IE) or at least more time consuming. The default has the windows stacked on each other, you can tell it to not stack them until the task bar is full. But to open a new browser window (not a tab), you have to opposite click on the icon in the task bar. Since I usually operate with as many as six or seven instances of Firefox going, some with nearly as many tabs then MS has again "fixed" something that wasn't broken. Are these big things, no, but it shows that MS still doesn't understand how to make an interface simple, elegant and powerful.