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- In case anyone is interested, here is some information about
- the system i am running with comments about the various hardware:
-
- * Processor : Intel Pentium III - 733mhz (133mhz bus) 0.18micron
-
- Currently one of the best CPUs out there, will probably be outdated
- by the time you read this, ah well.
-
-
-
- * Display Adaptor : LeadTek GeForce 32mb DDR
-
- The GeForce is a good card, and has quite a good TV out when you
- know how to set it up correctly. And that is the trick ;)
- I practically never use it for 3D which is a shame, but im
- practically sick of all the games coming out of late and haven't
- touched a game in over a year.
-
-
-
- * Memory : 384mb SDRAM, 133mhz
-
- 133mhz SDRAM, right now the best money can buy, once again, will
- get old once DDR SDRAM comes out for motherboards.
-
-
-
- * Screen: IIyama Vision Master Pro 450 - 19"
-
- My new monitor, it's got kick-ass colors and uses an aperture grill
- Diamondtron super-flat tube. I went through several Hitachi net masked
- tubes and i came to the conclusion that net masking technology sucks,
- it makes the image appear blurred, the pixels are not uniform, but
- appear to be in a hive style grid, simply horrible if you have any
- eye for graphics. The only downside to the aperture grill technology
- is the text, it appears to be moving a bit if you look real closely
- at it, but it's far less annoying the all the net masking issue other
- screens exhibit.
-
-
-
- * Sound Card: Aureal VORTEX2 SuperQuad Digital PCI
-
- Received this card to test the new Aureal code in PowerDVD 2.0906.
- and i must say it's pretty impressive. It has an optical SP/DIF
- port on the back, support for 4-Speakers, DirectSound acceleration
- with hardware mixing. This card speeds PowerDVD by around 20%.
- Too bad Aureal went belly-up.
-
-
-
- * Sound System: Aiwa NSX-V700
-
- This baby is a manufacturer's dream. 1 day after the warranty wore off,
- the CD-Player dies. Being too lazy and poor to fix it, I never bothered.
- Might aswell play CDs through the computer.
-
-
-
- * DVD-Rom drive: Hitachi GD-2500
-
- Yes, finally to the DVD-Rom drive. At first i wanted to get the
- Toshiba SD-M1202 5x drive, however the drive they shipped
- me was banged in shipping, hard enough to dent the metal
- casing.
-
- And after that there were no more single drives in supply,
- only DVD Kits (drives+decoder cards). So my next option
- was to go with the Hitachi GD-2500.
-
- While slightly slower than other 3rd generation DVD drives,
- this drive has yet to give me any trouble and i have put
- it through quite a bit of rigor, so i guess it's a winner
- in my book.
-
-
-
- * Hardware Decoder: Sigma Designs REALMagic Hollywood Plus - Rev.A
-
- This decoder card is very nice, works rather well, and the TV
- quality isn't even comparable to the monitor quality produced
- by software decoders (it's better). This is probably due to the
- automatic anti-aliasing created by the TV display system.
-
- However, I don't bother attaching the pass-through cable,
- for monitor viewing, Software decoders are usually better
- when viewing on a monitor.
-
- This card does have issues though, it has problems with certain
- titles and likes to cause hardware conflicts.
-