/me reminds jeff of prices vs. availability.. i live in bum-fuk-egypt arkansas.. but am considering buying online to save bucks/hassle..

also, what exactly does "SE" stand for? "Substandard Equipment"?

if it overheats so easily, you might see if you have the voltages set correctly..

i am not positive on this, but i am betting, unless its an auto setting AGP slot, you might need to set a jumper some place.

my 9000 never over heats, even while running power hungry games.. and it has no cooling fan at all..

ATI have been accused of cheating, and it's failed. They've optimised their rendering techniques, and in some cases it has shown a slight drop in image quality. This can be rectified through the ATI control panel properties. The optimisation has been in placed on the 9600 series for the majority of it's lifespan, and yet no-one has noticed the image quality. Nvidia's "optimisations" on the other hand are painfully obvious, and cannot be turned off. ATI have come forward and made a press statement about their optimisations and have said how to turn it off, if the users want to. Nvidia continue to deny that there's any form of optimisation which reduces image quality. As for their 'leaked' documents, I'm pretty sure that they'll be illegal in the UK. AFAIK, it's illegal to slag off a competing product.

OK one thing which puts ATI in the lead? PRICE/PERFORMANCE. All the way. The 6800 ultra is going to be about ?400, the X800 XT is going to be about ?300-?350. How about the current range of graphics cards? In DX9 games (without Nvidia blocking DX9 effects altogether), the 9600 pro beats the FX5900. A ?100~ card beats Nvidias ?300 card.

The Linux/Windows thing was an analogy.

http://www.cclcomputers.biz/acatalog/vga_atis.htm << Bottom of there, ATI X800 Pro, ?300

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/sapphire_ati_graphics_cards.html << Bottom of there, ATI X800 XT, ?350

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/xfx_nvidia_graphics_cards.html << Bottom of there, Nvidia 6800 Ultra, ?400

Prices of the ATI cards have gone up ?50 or so since I last checked, but even so, ?50 and the card's on par/slightly faster.

http://images.sudhian.com/articles/dx9testing/aqua.gif

http://images.sudhian.com/articles/dx9testing/halo.gif

Taken from http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=431 . And yes, 3dmark03 does have the FX5900 pulling ahead, but it's apparently ridiculously easy to cheat at 3dmark.

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1715/

"We encourage users to experiment with moving the texture preference slider from "Quality" towards "Performance" ? you will see huge performance gains with no effect on image quality until the very end, and even then, the effect is hardly noticeable. We are confident that we give gamers the best image quality at every performance level." << can turn the 'cheat' off

"whatever the answers to these questions may be, we're still faced with the realization we've been looking at the Radeon 9600 for about a year, and haven't noticed any image quality issues. That further strengthens the notion that a shortcut, optimization, cheat, or whatever you'd like to call it, that only shows up when you scrutinize the screenshots with a microscope isn't really an issue." << it's been on the 9600's for yonks, and no-one noticed any difference.

Unfortuantely I can't show you what the Nvidia's image quality is like with optimisations, because the drivers detect when you're taking a screenshot and renders a full quality screenshot. I'll keep searching though. The closest I can find is this: http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/driverIQ/

Right this is my last post in this.

I'm not saying that ATI rules, I'm saying that Nvidia sucks. Every time Nvidia come out with something, ATI beats them. They've lied continuously for the past year/2 years about their drivers. And even when ATI are accused of cheating, they don't deny that the cheats arent there.

I wouldn't be so biased against Nvidia, if it wasn't for the fact that they're cheating and denying it. If they said "yup, we're cheating, sorry about that" then I wouldn't hate them. ATI did it, and they say "yup, we're cheating". The 'leaked' document just took them down to the stupid CS lamers. Given Nvidia's stance over the past 2 years, it'll be a long time before I trust them with anything.

Nvidia used to be my faviroute, but since the GF4s they have slipped so much it's unbelievable. The only advantages that they currently have over ATI is with older cards, such as the GF2 (if i was fitting a budget computer, i'd slap an Nvidia in rather than ATI), and market dominance.