Actually, I think MacBook Pros also use TN panels, albeit higher-quality ones. Seehere.
8-bit vs 6-bit only really matters when you're viewing static images, because you get the chance to look at the detail enough that dithering and FRC used by 6-bit panels would be noticeable. For gaming and watching movies, the contrast ratio is a much more important specification.
Very interesting. I was wrong to assume, seeing as the way Steve Jobs goes on. There actually seems to be a lot of discussion about this on the net if you search for macbook ips. There are reports of Apply lying and saying it's IPS when it's not. There are reports of no companies making IPS in that size, thus Apple not being able to get a supplier. There are reports that the Lenovo tablets are IPS and also iMacs being IPS.
I guess this is just typical considering the history of lies in display specifications over the past years. Pretty much any specs on any TV or monitor are going to be all lies.
Also, Apple seems to be using something called AFFS+, and also has excellent color calibration in OSX pre-tuned because they know exactly what screen you are using. That's probably why I can't tell, like I can with most screens.
My parents have offered me a $1000 budget for a new computer. I don't have much money to add to that budget, so a $250 monitor is kind of out of the question at the moment. I may buy a new one later, if a better monitor would turn out to be that big a difference. Granted, I've used an absolutely crap monitor for the past 4 years with no trouble, so ultra high quality probably won't be *that* critical for me. Still, if there are any other suggestions that fit within my budget (or even go slightly over - I have a graduation party on Saturday, and can probably expect an influx of money)
I like the alternative motherboard you posted, Scott, so I swapped out.
I noticed that the RAM I had was DDR2 800, while the motherboard can support DDR3 1333, so I swapped that out too.
The reason why I'm splurging slightly and going for the Intel over AMD is that my old computer had an AMD CPU in it, and I'd prefer to broaden my perspective and compare it to an Intel.
I, at the very least, want to have HDMI capabilities on this box, since I'm almost definitely going to hook it up to a TV at some point. Maybe on the monitor, it isn't that big a deal.
As I said before, that GPU is weak. You should definitely step up to something along the lines of an HD 4850, GTS 250, HD 5750, or HD 5770 - get the best you can afford out of this bunch, because at these price points the incremental costs are quite reasonable, and the 5750 and 5770 offer DirectX 11 support, which has some nice features.
As for wanting to broaden your perspective with an Intel CPU, that's terrible reasoning. If you want to compare CPUs, just look at benchmarks from a site like AnandTech. Just buy whatever offers you the best performance at your price point, or save money if you don't need to spend that much.
If you're primarily going to be gaming, CPU power isn't all that important and you can definitely save yourself some cash - the GPU is mostly going to be the limiting factor anyway. On the other hand, if you expect to do demanding tasks that tend to make great use of multiple threads like video encoding, AMD's cheap quad-cores will outperform Intel's dual-cores. The Core i3-530 will serve you well in tasks where a single thread will dominate, though.
As for wanting to broaden your perspective with an Intel CPU, that's terrible reasoning. If you want to compare CPUs, just look at benchmarks from a site like AnandTech. Just buy whatever offers you the best performance at your price point, or save money if you don't need to spend that much.
If you're just going to be gaming, CPU power isn't all that important and you can definitely save yourself some cash - the GPU is mostly going to be the limiting factor anyway. On the other hand, if you expect to do tasks like video encoding, AMD's cheap quad-cores will outperform Intel's budget dual-cores. The Core i3-530 will serve you well in tasks where a single thread will dominate, though.
Yea, my vote would be to go AMD as well. On a budget you can't beat it.
As I said before, that GPU is weak. You should definitely step up to something along the lines of an HD 4850, GTS 250, HD 5750, or HD 5770 - get the best you can afford out of this bunch, because at these price points the incremental costs are quite reasonable.
I assume college starts in September. It's currently the middle of June. That's 8-10 weeks. My advice is to get a job. If you're living with the parents, you currently have no food or rent expenses. Even at a crap job, as long as it pays hourly, you can come away with $40 a day after taxes and such. Even a summer camp counselor job, which doesn't pay hourly, only takes 8 weeks and pays out a few Gs. You'll be able to add a few hundred to your parents $1000 and get an awesome PC. Then save the rest so you can live large in college.
As I said before, that GPU is weak. You should definitely step up to something along the lines of an HD 4850, GTS 250, HD 5750, or HD 5770 - get the best you can afford out of this bunch, because at these price points the incremental costs are quite reasonable.
A GTS 250 is better than a 9800 GT by a fair margin, with 128 shaders vs 112 (~14% more) and significantly higher clock speeds, and so I'd focus on one of those - the GTS 250 is a rebadged 9800 GTX+, in fact. Personally, I'd still take the AMD offerings for their DirectX 11 support and lower power consumption, although the HD 5750's performance is on par with the GTS 250.
As I said before, that GPU is weak. You should definitely step up to something along the lines of an HD 4850, GTS 250, HD 5750, or HD 5770 - get the best you can afford out of this bunch, because at these price points the incremental costs are quite reasonable.
A GTS 250 is better than a 9800 GT by a fair margin, with 128 shaders vs 112 (~14% more) and significantly higher clock speeds, and so I'd focus on one of those - the GTS 250 is a rebadged 9800 GTX+, in fact. Personally, I'd still take the AMD offerings for their DirectX 11 support and lower power consumption, although the HD 5750's performance is on par with the GTS 250.
Looks fine to me, though it seems a little expensive for a GTS 250, since it's only $10 off the ~$125 for an HD 5750.
As for 6Gb/s, mechanical hard drives can't use that kind of bandwidth anyway, so it's pointless. Just focus on the amount of space you need, and price per GB. Also, 7200rpm drives perform better than 5400rpm drives.
I'm using the $1000 budget for the computer only. I'll be saving up money after the fact for the printer/monitor/etc. THAT SAID, I can splurge a teensy bit more.
Well, if you've got extra money to work with for the box, you can definitely spend some more on the graphics card. Besides that, you can just spend more on the monitor. You could also change the CPU, but in your position I would only bother if you can afford an Intel quad-core. Mind you, AMD is now offering 6 cores at the $200 price point, and for tasks like video encoding they're once again better, so you need to work out what you need from your CPU.
I'm using the $1000 budget for the computer only. I'll be saving up money after the fact for the printer/monitor/etc.
Smart move. You don't need a printer. You can always borrow someone else's or use a school one.
If you want speed and storage, get two hard drives: a smallish 7200rpm one, and a massive, slow, cheap 5400 one. That would probably be cheaper than a massive 7200rpm one (but I can't say for sure: I haven't checked current prices).
You can upgrade your RAM later cheaply, so if you can get a better CPU/Mobo/Video card NOW by getting less RAM, do it, and get the RAM when you have a windfall later.
So, if you look at the wish list now, I've made some changes to match my budgeting decision. I suppose I'll be looking into a better video card now. Specific suggestions?
High resolution is good. Now that I'm not going nuts over the monitor, though, I'm not totally sure what resolution I'd be looking for. Also, I can't say that I have a lot of experience with crazy-high resolution... So, what's a good video card I can get for, say, $200 or less?
If you know so little about computers, and you are short on moneys, perhaps building one is not the best option. Sure, the same thing from Newegg might be a little cheaper than the same thing from Dell. However, how confident are you that you can put it together without breaking it? If you screw it up, what then? I built my first computer with my own money, so if I screwed up it as all me.
If you know so little about computers, and you are short on moneys, perhaps building one is not the best option. Sure, the same thing from Newegg might be a little cheaper than the same thing from Dell. However, how confident are you that you can put it together without breaking it? If you screw it up, what then?
I'm competent with building computers, I've done it before. That was a while ago, though, and I'm a bit out of the loop with more recent technology, so I'm here to gather information/experiences.
This is a good starting point. The HD 5770 is a solid offering at ~$150; the GTX 260 used to be its main competition, but its market presence is all but gone now that Nvidia is working on GF104. Nonetheless, a GTX 260 will perform better than the 5770, so if you see one for a similar price it's a good deal, although you'll have to drop DirectX 11.
These two are solid cards, though they get 20-30 FPS at max settings on more demanding games like BattleForge, Metro 2033, and Crysis: Warhead at max settings at 1680x1050. Have a look at these benchmarks (there's plenty of others on the 'net, just Google for them).
Realistically the only thing that's really screw-up-able is bending CPU pins. Fortunately, Intel CPUs are super easy in this regard. Just don't buy incompatible components and you're good.
That monitor is poop. If it isn't IPS, it's shit. It can only display 6-bits per color. That means 262,144 possible colors. Your video card is putting out full 32 bit color. That's 16.7 million possible colors. If you don't get an IPS monitor, what's the point of paying so much for fancy graphics cards and such? Dell Ultrasharp or bust.
This monitor says it is TN and 16.7 million colours. I'll be buying a monitor soon. Can you explain IPS and TN a bit more?
Thismonitor says it is TN and 16.7 million colours. I'll be buying a monitor soon. Can you explain IPS and TN a bit more?
It says 16.7 million colors because if you set your video card to 32-bit color mode, the monitor will work. It supports that mode, therefore it advertises it. However, the individual pixels in the actual monitor are not actually capable of displaying all those different colors. Instead, they will just change into the closest color they are able to. An IPS monitor like a Dell Ultrasharp or the ones on some Apple computers will actually be able to do it for real.
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I guess this is just typical considering the history of lies in display specifications over the past years. Pretty much any specs on any TV or monitor are going to be all lies.
Also, Apple seems to be using something called AFFS+, and also has excellent color calibration in OSX pre-tuned because they know exactly what screen you are using. That's probably why I can't tell, like I can with most screens.
The viewing angle test is another good demonstration of the flaws of TN panels.
My parents have offered me a $1000 budget for a new computer. I don't have much money to add to that budget, so a $250 monitor is kind of out of the question at the moment. I may buy a new one later, if a better monitor would turn out to be that big a difference. Granted, I've used an absolutely crap monitor for the past 4 years with no trouble, so ultra high quality probably won't be *that* critical for me. Still, if there are any other suggestions that fit within my budget (or even go slightly over - I have a graduation party on Saturday, and can probably expect an influx of money)
I like the alternative motherboard you posted, Scott, so I swapped out.
I noticed that the RAM I had was DDR2 800, while the motherboard can support DDR3 1333, so I swapped that out too.
The reason why I'm splurging slightly and going for the Intel over AMD is that my old computer had an AMD CPU in it, and I'd prefer to broaden my perspective and compare it to an Intel.
I, at the very least, want to have HDMI capabilities on this box, since I'm almost definitely going to hook it up to a TV at some point. Maybe on the monitor, it isn't that big a deal.
So given that, thoughts?
As for wanting to broaden your perspective with an Intel CPU, that's terrible reasoning. If you want to compare CPUs, just look at benchmarks from a site like AnandTech. Just buy whatever offers you the best performance at your price point, or save money if you don't need to spend that much.
If you're primarily going to be gaming, CPU power isn't all that important and you can definitely save yourself some cash - the GPU is mostly going to be the limiting factor anyway. On the other hand, if you expect to do demanding tasks that tend to make great use of multiple threads like video encoding, AMD's cheap quad-cores will outperform Intel's dual-cores. The Core i3-530 will serve you well in tasks where a single thread will dominate, though.
Also, is it worth it to shell out the extra $20 or so for a 1TB 6Gb/s HD? The motherboard I have right now supports SATA 6Gb/s.
As for 6Gb/s, mechanical hard drives can't use that kind of bandwidth anyway, so it's pointless. Just focus on the amount of space you need, and price per GB. Also, 7200rpm drives perform better than 5400rpm drives.
I'm using the $1000 budget for the computer only. I'll be saving up money after the fact for the printer/monitor/etc. THAT SAID, I can splurge a teensy bit more.
If you want speed and storage, get two hard drives: a smallish 7200rpm one, and a massive, slow, cheap 5400 one. That would probably be cheaper than a massive 7200rpm one (but I can't say for sure: I haven't checked current prices).
You can upgrade your RAM later cheaply, so if you can get a better CPU/Mobo/Video card NOW by getting less RAM, do it, and get the RAM when you have a windfall later.
These two are solid cards, though they get 20-30 FPS at max settings on more demanding games like BattleForge, Metro 2033, and Crysis: Warhead at max settings at 1680x1050. Have a look at these benchmarks (there's plenty of others on the 'net, just Google for them).