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Gary S.

Gary S.

Joined on 03/25/01

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 38
Most Favorable Review

Simply great...

ASUS Black 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model DVD-E616A3T
ASUS Black 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model DVD-E616A3T

Pros: Fast! Works with all my games. Quiet. Did I say quiet? I meant QUIET as in virtually silent. I really don't hear anything from the drive.

Cons: none

Overall Review: Did I mention it was quiet?

Most Critical Review

Not as good as I had hoped...

PLANAR 20" Active Matrix, TFT LCD UXGA LCD Monitor 6 ms D-Sub, DVI-D PL2010M
PLANAR 20" Active Matrix, TFT LCD UXGA LCD Monitor 6 ms D-Sub, DVI-D PL2010M

Pros: Excellent crispness and clarity of picture - best I've seen. No dead/stuck pixels on two of these LCDs. Response times were adequate for gaming unless you're really picky.

Cons: Inconsistent color temperature from left to right of screen. Cold color cast (bluish tint) right out of the box. Soft backlight bleed spread out over a larger area than is usual. Colors are somewhat undersaturated (might not be a 'con' for you). Horrific stand! Only a couple of inches high. It cannot be removed once put on. Manual tells you to detach the entire stand assembly if needed. The only problem is that then you cannot get it back in the box if you need to return it. Test this LCD BEFORE you snap on the stand!!! Color tone very quickly changes (goes cold) as you alter your viewing angle - much worse than other LCDs I've seen.

Overall Review: Like probably every other LCD on the market today, this one has it's problems. But not as pronounced as the cheap, poor-quality 22" TN-panel LCDs everyone is eating up these days. As I said, clarity of detail in pictures was astonishing - most likely due its fine dot pitch. Backlight bleed is better than other LCDs (TN-panel) I've tried where backlight bleed was more intense. I returned the first PL2010M because of the inconsistent color temp across the screen. The second unit seems to have the same problem but to a slightly lesser degree. It's time for me to get off the buy-and-return roller coaster. I'm going to keep this one and see how it goes. I'm coming from a 19" Viewsonic VP930b that was absolutely perfect right out of the box. I blame many of the problems of today's LCDs on a too powerful backlight (>250 nit).

STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!

ATI Radeon HD 2400PRO 256MB DDR2 PCI Express x16 Graphics Card HD2400PRO-256-BULK-2R
ATI Radeon HD 2400PRO 256MB DDR2 PCI Express x16 Graphics Card HD2400PRO-256-BULK-2R

Pros: None

Cons: This is a half-height card but it does not come with a full-height backplate. As such, it will not fit in your case. Yes, you heard right. It will not fit in your case unless you have some strange slimline case. Also, a friend told me that I would have to use the DVI splitter cable included in order to attach this card to a monitor. I can't verify that as I could not install the card.

Overall Review: This card must be something Newegg found in their attic and figured they could get a few bucks for. Hopefully, others will heed my warning and not have to go through the hassle of returning this like I did.

12/31/2011

Another weiner from Nvidia!

Galaxy GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card 57NKH3HS00GZ
Galaxy GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card 57NKH3HS00GZ

Pros: Awesome performance-to-cost ratio! Fan controls temps VERY well. In my rig, fan is not audible even when set to 65%! Game coupons and a rebate - weeeeee! Running card at 850/1000 with volts set only to 1.0v!

Cons: Amazingly, no power-converter cables included! No fancy box or fancy graphics on card!

Overall Review: Just prior to this I snagged an HD 5870 at a very good price but its fan was WAAAAY too loud and its VGA converted output was incompatible with my VGA KVM (severe jitters). My friend said "just get an Nvidia card and be happy." He was right. Whenever I get an Nvidia card, everything is pure bliss. When I try ATI cards, there are always issues, disapointments and compromises. I highly recommend this card! With the fan set to "auto", I didn't even hear it when running Unigine benchmarks and FurMark. Fan peaked at 67% while temps peaked at 87C. With fan forced to 75%, FurMark temps peaked at 70C (amazing!). In other words, the fan is very effective and you should easily be able to find your sweet spot between temps and fan noise. Even at 75%, the fan made "white noise" - not the howling blowdryer noise of, for example, an ATI HD 5870.

Great card...unless you own a GTX 260

MSI GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC
MSI GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC

Pros: Awesome cooler - best I've ever experienced! Viciously overclockable - completely stable at 900Mhz at max voltage. Great overclocking software - convenient and easy to use.

Cons: Even at 900Mhz on the core, performance was only slightly better than my overclocked GTX 260 (192 shaders). And in one case, it was actually worse.

Overall Review: I"m running Win 7 64-bit on an E8500 running at just over 3.8Ghz with 4GB of RAM. The performance gains seen at different review sites did not pan out for me at all. This is one HIGH-QUALITY video card. Excecpt for the performance, I was VERY impressed with it. This is not meant to dis the card but if you currently have a GTX 260, I would not bother with this card at all.

I can't get this thing hot!

ZEROtherm CF900 92mm CPU Cooler
ZEROtherm CF900 92mm CPU Cooler

Pros: - low profile - no height clearance issues - incredibly low temps (idle/full load) - almost inaudible (fan runs at 1000-1200 rpms in my rig) - gorgeous HSF (in a tech way if you get my drift) - rebate, free shipping (for the moment)

Cons: - possible side-to-side clearance issues - would not fit in the mainboard I bought it for (I ended up getting a different mainboard). Heat pipes may interfere with first RAM slot making installation a no-go. Second mainboard worked fine.

Overall Review: I torture the snot out of my 10x330=3.3Ghz E5200 and with this HSF temps read in the high 40's. Idles in the low 20's. What do I have to do to make this thing break a sweat? And it doesn't make enough noise either. Runs almost silently at 1000-1200rpms. Because of my other computer's fan noise, I wanted to hear when this rig was on so I had to add a noisier fan to the case front. :S Hoping they keep this one around for a while - it may be the best HSF I've ever used!