Buying New Pc!

[Macsen]

Dunno, I didn't build it, don't understand this stuff. Here's the things I got in my invoice anyway:

 

Barracuda 200GB 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD OEM

Seagate P/N:ST3200822A

 

Athlon 3500 64bit 939 Pin CPU Retail ( Newcastle )

AMD P/N:ADA3500AWBOX

 

Pro 12cm Double Ball Bearing Fan

Antec P/N:761345-75003-8

 

PaxPower2 460W PSU 12cm Black Fan Active PFC 24Pin

Akasa P/N:AK-P460FG-BKUK

 

Eclipse 62 Black Ally Case 4x5.25" 9x3.5" No PSU

Akasa P/N:AK-BKCSE-01

 

ATA133 Cable - Black 45cm

Akasa P/N:ATA-45-B

 

Maxi View Windowed Side Panel for Eclipse 62 Case

Akasa P/N:AK-BKWSP-01

 

Wireless Optical Desktop V3 Keyboard & Mouse

Microsoft P/N:BX2-00011

 

GeForce 6600GT 128MB DDR TV Out PCI Express

XFX P/N:PVT43GNDF7

 

LL172GB 17" TFT Black DVI 16ms Multimedia Monitor

Sharp P/N:LL172GB

 

Skt 939 nForce4 SLI chipset PCIex16 SATA USB2 MoBo

Asus P/N:A8N-SLI

 

ND3520A Dual Layer Int IDE Black 16x DVDRW +/- OEM

NEC P/N:3520A/B

 

 

I don't know if that sheds any light on it! :lol:

[Ishtvan]

How does the LCD screen do with the dark blacks and the high refresh rates?

[Domarius]

Yes, that was my first thought All the LCDs that I've seen SUCK when you try to play Thief, because the colour "vibrance" range is SOO much narrower.

 

With a CRT (that's a standard, huge box shaped monitor to you Macsen, not the flat one you have there), it is ACTUALLY light being shot at you, from a naturally dark, unlit screen, so what you're seeing is truer than an LCD. Turn out the lights, take the gamma right down, set the contrast right up, and those orange torchlights in the darkness look sooo rich and beautiful...

 

While on an LCD (what you got there Macsen) turn out the lights, turn the contrast up, and it all looks washed out, and the dark areas look GREY!! Why? Because it's the reverse of a CRT. It's FULLY lit at full white from behind, and then the LCD pixels try to stop light getting through by turning darker, to create the colours. Of course this will never block the light 100%, so when you turn out the lights in your room, all the "black" areas look grey because you can see the light still passing through the blackened LCD pixels.

 

This results in a lower range of colours, and is why graphic designers always hunt down a good CRT, and use it instead of or alongside their LCD.

 

 

And then of course there's the "blurring" you get with fast movements because the LCD pixels can't go from solid to transparent very fast.

 

 

And then of course there's the viewing angle, where the screen goes dark or light at the top or bottom depending on how youre viewing it.

 

 

So anyway, I have never seen an LCD that didn't make me say "boy I hope CRTs are still reasonably priced when I upgrade...". And a lot of people never understand why.

 

I will be getting both.

 

 

I can't wait till I can afford shit like that though, Macsen. Those features are awesome...

200GB hard drive?????????? You will never fill it. Ever.

My 40gb is still ample space.

Edited May 8, 2005 by Domarius

[BlackThief]

I can't wait till I can afford shit like that though, Macsen.  Those features are awesome...

200GB hard drive?????????? You will never fill it.  Ever.

My 40gb is still ample space.

lol I wish I'd have bought a 200gb HDD. my new 160gb is almost filled and I bought it september last year

[Fingernail]

120 here, stays approx 50% full all the time.

[Darkness_Falls]

200GB hard drive?????????? You will never fill it. Ever.

That's what my friend said about a 6GB hard drive nearly 10 years ago. Considering we've watched games go from <250MB in size, to a gig, to 5 gigs...and Microsoft taking up bigger and bigger sized chunks of our hard drives, 200 GB will some day not be enough. As with everything else in technology, it will some day be obsolete. Terabytes for our homes here we come!

[Fingernail]

and Microsoft taking up bigger and bigger sized chunks of our hard drives,

You should tell Bill to get a place of his own, or at the very least his own PC.

[oDDity]

Yeah, my 80 gig fills up in 2-3 months every time and I have to go on a cd burning spree before my quarterly reformatting.

 

Air will fill any space provided no matter how big, and the same goes for crap you download from the internet.

[Ishtvan]

As Domarius said, the contrast ratio (or on brightness / off brightness) is usually fairly low on LCD's, like 15:1-20:1, so it's hard to get true blacks.

 

I wonder why that is though, because from a science standpoint, there is no reason that you couldn't get 100% extinction. If you don't know already, LCD's work by putting light thru two perpendicular polarizers, with the liquid crystal in the middle. They're normally on (ie, light goes thru when no field is applied) because the cholesteric LC naturally assumes a helix shape to rotate the polarization of incoming light 90 degrees, so it gets thru the crossed polarizers.

 

So theoretically, when you put an electric field across the pixel and destroy the helix orientation of the LC, none of the light should get thru the crossed polarizers and you should get true black.

 

Why you don't get true black, I'm not sure. Maybe it's because the polarizers are not 100% efficient. White light usually has completely random polarizations and must be converted to one polarization by the bottom polarizer. Maybe the bottom polarizer lets some light thru that is polarized the same as the top one, so it just goes thru regardless of the LC orientation and makes the pixel lit when it's not supposed to be.

 

[Edit: Btw, if you want a display that takes up very little space and doesn't have the refresh/contrast problems of LCD, or the high power consumption and burn-in problems of Plasma, you might have to wait for Field Emisson TV. They are still in development, but if they can figure out how to reduce costs, this will be one awesome TV, and it uses Quantum Wires to work : http://www.physorg.com/news86.html ]

Edited May 8, 2005 by Ishtvan

[Domarius]

Well I don't know much about science, all I know is that I can clearly see that those LCD pixels are crap at blocking light It's just pouring through them in a dark room, like looking at dark cellophane with a light behind it.

[Macsen]

I don't understand that 'light coming through the black' thing. I've tried running Doom 3 and squinting like mad, but it still looks very much black to me. If you look at the screen at a big angle it does 'shine' white, but otherwise it's fine.

[Ishtvan]

The reason isn't so much the light coming from the back. It has to do with how well you can block light with two crossed polarizers and a liquid crystal in the middle that's been moved out of its natural orientation. If some of the crystals retain their natural helical orientation (not sure how many they use for a single pixel), or if the first polarizer doesn't completely block out light of the opposite polarization, you will see some leaking thru.

 

I guess they're constantly working on the problem tho and trying to get the on/off ratio higher, and it's good news if the blacks look pitch black on your screen.

[Domarius]

If you use a CRT monitor, and turn out the lights, and turn the contrast right up, so that the colours are as strong as possible, and then turn the brightness down, so that black truely becomes black, you will see what I mean.

 

On an LCD, you only have the one brightness setting, no contrast (as far as I know) on most of them anyway, and turning this up only makes the light at the back more powerful.

So if you turn out the lights, and turn the brightness up, blacks become grey. Turn it down, and the picture just gets dimmer. :/