Joined on 02/29/08
Pretty good card
Pros: Large memory capacity, PCI express, low power consumption, works good for low profile systems (in my case, the Vostro(tm) 200 slimtower.
Cons: The GPU is only a GeForce 8400GS, but considering its a low profile card and its low power consumption (and the price), I cant complain.
Overall Review: I use for casual games: World of Warcraft(tm) Battlefront(tm) (the first one) Age of Mythology(tm) Dungeon Siege LOA(tm) High Settings on all of them. Games like that. I hope this helps =)
Onboard DVI?
Pros: Pros... Well the pros typically intertwine with the cons, ironically. There is on board DVI as well as analog... 4 SATA ports - i guess fairly acceptable for raid.
Cons: Onboard DVI generally has problems because of the conflict between it and analog. This can deteriorate the sound at some points, or even lower the FPS by a couple notches, but at the integrated level it doesnt make much of a difference - especially if those who use this mobo to game buy a graphics card. If you are using this for rendering, etc. try going a lil' more for the $$ mobos. .. and just stick to the analog-only integrated graphics to avoid problems.
Overall Review: Board is not mine =(
Trustworthy
Pros: Works reliably. Does everything you would have expected it to do. Served me well for 4 years before dying.
Cons: Nothing particularly special about the color or contrast. At times flat, but again extremely reliable in the long run. Very clear picture with DVI.
Overall Review: Very decent monitor. R.I.P.
Reliable little card
Pros: I owned this card for about 1.5 years and it didn't act up once (until it died, obviously). Extremely reliable for all the light gaming that I did. It can render textures rather fast, and it's extremely potent at projecting both 2D and 3D geometric objects VIA DirectX and Open GL.
Cons: The card's greatest weakness is its incompetance in shading ability. Any time you turn on a lighting bloom, rendered shadow, or particle shadow setting, expect your FPS to drop anywhere from 20-40 FPS easy.
Overall Review: Upon further inspection, the reason this card died was not due directly to a fried chip (no pun intended), but from a warped fan/heatsink that came partially undone from the board itself. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do to to replace the fan, seeing as how it's held together by plastic fasteners.
Arcade 360
Pros: The ground-breaking physics and graphics of the Xbox 360 bring new life to those old Xbox games, like the original Halo, with a spark! The graphics engine takes complete advantage of any game's textures and models, plus adds more clarity with amazing multi-sampling and anti-aliasing abilities. Powered with a custom made ATI© GPU - a 500mhz processing unit with 10mb of integrated memory at a whopping transfer speed of 256GB/s and topped with a 48-way parallel shader pipelines and and unified shader architecture, this graphics engine is hard to beat. In addition, the 360 has a custom POWERPC© based CPU- three symmetrical cores running at 3.2ghz, a 1MB L2 cache, and a blazing 2.7Ghz FSB. A feature especially unique the Xbox series is connecting gamers across the world. Xbox live is new and improved with the 360, allowing gaming matches with up to 32 players. The internet capabilites are also used well by Microsoft© when it comes to downloads. Demos, movies, and more are on Xbox Live.
Cons: The 360 has limited cooling capabilities. If you don't keep your system cool, you might get your fingers burned. Check out the intercooler kit online at the Xbox website or your local electronics store to keep things cool. Make sure to keep your console in an OPEN area to allow air flow- crucial to keeping your system in top shape. This particular system comes with 512mb of integrated Hard Drive memory. If you are looking to play those old Half-Life and Halo games, you need to pick up an external HDD from the store. Sizes usually are supplied in both 60GB HDD's and 120GB HDD's. Installation is simple. Instructions are engraved on the bottom side of the HDD.
Overall Review: If you are looking for one of the latest and greatest HD gaming consoles for an affordable price, this is probably the one for you.
Overkill
Pros: Large memory capacity and fairly good GPU for a low profile card. Price is reasonable and its PCI Express... Of course after you read my Cons, you will see that you can still buy this, but I wouldnt recomend the 1gb allocation.
Cons: Although the memory capacity can be allocated to 1gb, it would not be used efficiently because the GPU is only a 8400GS, even 512mb is stretching it. The best way to visualize this is that the Memory is sand and the GPU is a funnel. The more sand that goes through the funnel, the faster the processes are run. In this case, there is way more sand than needed, so there will always be excess sand at the top of the funnel because the funnel is not large enough to let all the sand through.
Overall Review: If you need a low power consumption, low profile graphics card for multimedia, casual gaming, or everyday computer use, I would suggest the Jaton(tm) PX8400GS_EX. It has the same GPU (8400GS) but the memory capacity is 512mb so it can be used more efficiently.