Microsoft announce pricing structure for Windows 8

Upgrading to Windows 8 will cost just $39.99 when it's made available later this year, Microsoft has announced.

According to the company, users in 131 countries will be able to purchase the software as an update, and get Windows Media Center as a free add-on.

“Starting at general availability, if your PC is running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 you will qualify to download an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99 in 131 markets,” said Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc in a company blog.

"If you want, you can add Windows Media Center for free through the 'add features' option within Windows 8 Pro after your upgrade."

Microsoft said customers purchasing the upgrade from its website would be guided through the download and upgrade process, with tools to highlight potential problems.

According to Microsoft, the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant will check hardware and software for compatibility and provide a report detailing issues users need to address before or after the upgrade.

Upgrade limitations

Although users upgrading from Windows 7 will be able to carry all their personalisations forward to Windows 8, anyone using older versions would see some loss of functionality,

“You will be able to upgrade from any consumer edition of Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro and bring everything along which includes your Windows settings, personal files, and apps,” Microsoft said.

“If you are upgrading from Windows Vista, you will be able to bring along your Windows settings and personal files, and if you are upgrading from Windows XP you will only be able to bring along your personal files.”

The company also said a DVD version of the upgrade to Windows 8 Pro would be available for $69.99 during a promotion that runs until the end of January 2013.

The offer comes on top of a previously announced offer for new PC buyers to upgrade from Windows 7 to 8 for $15.

UK pricing has yet to be confirmed.

-- This article is taken from PC Pro magazine.

Even if this translated into £40 for the UK, as is normally how they do the conversion, this is still a great price point. I can see a lot of people upgrading, especially as they are also allowing XP owners to use their licenses for the upgrade.

This was something I was really annoyed about with Vista and Windows 7, as the upgrades from XP cost over £100 to Vista and then the same again for Windows 7. I did upgrade to Vista at the time, buying the Ultimate edition for something like £169, but with Windows 7 they wanted nearly the same use for an upgrade. Madness. I should be able to happily use my XP or Vista licenses to obtain a legitimate copy. ;)

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I did upgrade to Vista at the time, buying the Ultimate edition for something like £169, but with Windows 7 they wanted nearly the same use for an upgrade.

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Out of interest, why did you purchase Vista?

Regardless of what people say, Vista was a big step forward from XP. Many people held on to using XP (some even still do), but after using Vista and now Windows 7, almost exclusively since Vista was released, going back and using XP feels very dated and old fashioned. Also Windows 7 doesn't feel that different to Vista, just a little cleaner UI, a little smoother and faster to use etc but people slag Vista off a lit and praise Win 7 at the same time. The reality of that is exactly the same as when XP was first released. When both XP and Vista were launched the average home PC was not really up to the spec needed to run them well. With XP it really needs 1GB of ram and a 2GHz+ CPU to feel smooth, responsive and nice to use. At launch most people had 256MB, and luckier ones 512MB ram. This gave people a really negative impression of using XP as it ground to a halt resorting to harddrive caching to compensate for the lack of ram, and with hdd's not being so fast in most people's PCs at the time didn't help either. And with Vista it was the same. You really needed 2GB of ram, a 512MB or more dedicated GPU, and a 3GHz CPU. Most people trying Vista at launch had their XP spec PCs with 1GB ram, a 2-2.5GHz CPU, and worst still many with more budget PCs and Laptops had built in graphics that shared system ram and were not good. With these setups Vista just ground to a halt. Throw it a dual or quad core CPU, 4GB ram and a 1GB GPU and it was very nice to use.

As for the actual main reasons for professional. To access more than 4GB of ram I needed a 64bit OS, and XP Pro x64 was completely rubbish with hardly any driver/hardware support and very limited compatibility. Vista 64bit fixed this and allowed me to run 8GB ram for video editing (which is the one area you really need every bit of ram you can throw at a system for ram previews during development if a sequence). Also Adobe started to drop support for XP and some of the software in their complete Master suite was starting to state a minimum of Vista to work. A less important reason for upgrading to Vista was DirectX 10 support for newer graphics cards, and games directly supporting it. With XP people are stuck with DX9.0c. And with 32bit OS's you have the 4GB ram limit shared between the GPU and CPU, so if you have a current 2GB GPU are are going to find only about 2.5GB of system ram available, regardless of how much physical ram is installed.

Hi All
The joy of Windows Vista. It is still a good os i had it running on a compaq with 1Ghz processor, 512mb. 40gig HDD, 256meg grapics card. and it was stiil fast enough for everyday use well for me
any way.
Many Thanks
Andrew

I've only used Windows Vista once or twice, and have only used Windows 7 a few times. I primarily use it at college to click on the Start menu (or whatever it is called these days), and click on the OrCad button.

As a Linux user I have no need to use newer versions of Windows. I'm curious to see Windows 8, but I doubt I will have any use for it.

For me Linux is great for server/web development, but not mature enough as a desktop OS. It also hasn't anything to compete with professional design software on the PC/Mac.

I'm tempted...but history with Windows means I will wait. Bugs are bound to be found!

Historically that was very true, but remember that Windows 8 is heavily based on Windows 7, and that itself was a very well bug fixed version of Vista. So in theory Windows 8 should be pretty good from the outset. Also take into account that Windows 8 has been publicly available in beta form for a long time for anyone to download and try out... so it is the most bug fixed and tested versions ever.

I wouldn't even waste my time thinking about Windows 8. It's utter ******** & I wouldn't use it even if it was free.

Still refusing to upgrade from XP Charlie? ;)

No Dave, I had to go Win7 64 to play games on High end cards ffs. I also object to the instances @ versions of other shit such as Net Framework & such. Gah.

WinBlows 8 - sucky sucky! :bag:

So what do you actually think of Windows 7? As bad as you thought? Or growing on you? Nice to have access to more than 4GB ram though isn't it? What spec system you running now?

Still the same water cooled 6GB Skt 1366 i7 rig I posted over @ AmiBay, but soon to be ex-dual GTX 580'd.

And yeah, 64Bit is the only thing to do for more than 3.5GB of ram to show. Even Creative X-Fi Fatality cards can be a pain in the ass under this Win7 platform though. Plug in a TomTom Sat nav for an update & the sound get's fux0rd because the OS thinks it's a media device??? - The only way to restore sound is to un-install the X-Fi in Device manager & let it re-discover itself on a soft re-boot?? - This sort of crap just shouldn't be happening, but @ the same time; LOL!! :lol:

Wasn't the Creative X-Fi issue due to a complete redesign of how Windows handled audio since Vista? and Creative cards had a big issue with that change and having to make new drivers for them. but still not that stable.

So what are you replacing the 580s with?

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Wasn't the Creative X-Fi issue due to a complete redesign of how Windows handled audio since Vista? and Creative cards had a big issue with that change and having to make new drivers for them. but still not that stable.

So what are you replacing the 580s with?

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Probably Creative being as creative as they were with DMA issues back in the early days. Tbh Dave, I'm sure things will behave better once I can get into either of the two 2x PCIe slots that are currently blocked off with the stock Gigabyte UD7 NB Cooler. The rig needs a spring clean & the supplied UD7 NB Water Block putting into the loop. So, now the GTX580 replacements have arrived, I need to rebuild the whole rig for some really cool running, & the new cards are staying on Air for a while.

I replaced them with a couple of Gigabyte Windforce 3 GTX 670's. Amazing cards & I really do mean amazing!! - I've only run one of them for a "look-see" and am seriously impressed. I only show Vantage benchies for the moment, because the program scales very well with SLI cards, so have a squiz below:

Dual GTX 580's

http://www.kinhell.amibay.com/Kin/Pi...-SLI_thumb.JPG


Single GTX 670

http://www.kinhell.amibay.com/Kin/Pi...ngle_thumb.JPG

The real plus about the 670's over the 580's (forgetting the FPS thing for a moment) is the heat. The dual 580's on air came out of the Vantage Benchmark @ nearly 90 DegC. The single 670 came out @ 35 DegC.

It's also about power consumption too. It would have cost £500 for GTX 580 Water blocks, Radiator upgrade & a PSU upgrade. For selling the 580's @ £450 clear, it was only £186 to go & buy 2 x GTX 670's & I can still run them both on air with decent temps & the PSU I already have. - Ker-Ching! :shades:

Very nice indeed. That single card is definitely not too far behind the older SLI setup is it. Would like to see what results you get once you have the SLI'd 670's installed.

There's me thinking my GTX 560 Ti 1gig ddr3 was good it's the biggest card i have ever had.:(

The 560 is still a very good card, and if you can still play the games you want to play at high settings then it is definitely good enough.

I'll start a thread in the coming weeks for you. - Life took another dive for us this morning. - Deb's Dad passed away.

:rip: Ted xx

Sorry to hear that Charlie. Please pass mine and Annabel's condolences and best wishes to Deb's and the rest of the family.

Thanks for the kind words Dave. Debs appears to be coping well so far, but lots to arrange. Her Bro is over today helping her go through the necessary procedures, but we are still yet waiting, for the coroner's Officer to report on the post mortem. Because we didn't have a Doctors certificate of death, the coroner's office have to be involved.

Life goes on, as they say...... :elvis:

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Originally Posted by Kin Hell

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Wasn't the Creative X-Fi issue due to a complete redesign of how Windows handled audio since Vista? and Creative cards had a big issue with that change and having to make new drivers for them. but still not that stable.

So what are you replacing the 580s with?

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Probably Creative being as creative as they were with DMA issues back in the early days. Tbh Dave, I'm sure things will behave better once I can get into either of the two 2x PCIe slots that are currently blocked off with the stock Gigabyte UD7 NB Cooler. The rig needs a spring clean & the supplied UD7 NB Water Block putting into the loop. So, now the GTX580 replacements have arrived, I need to rebuild the whole rig for some really cool running, & the new cards are staying on Air for a while.

I replaced them with a couple of Gigabyte Windforce 3 GTX 670's. Amazing cards & I really do mean amazing!! - I've only run one of them for a "look-see" and am seriously impressed. I only show Vantage benchies for the moment, because the program scales very well with SLI cards, so have a squiz below:

Dual GTX 580's

http://www.kinhell.amibay.com/Kin/Pi...-SLI_thumb.JPG


Single GTX 670

http://www.kinhell.amibay.com/Kin/Pi...ngle_thumb.JPG

The real plus about the 670's over the 580's (forgetting the FPS thing for a moment) is the heat. The dual 580's on air came out of the Vantage Benchmark @ nearly 90 DegC. The single 670 came out @ 35 DegC.

It's also about power consumption too. It would have cost £500 for GTX 580 Water blocks, Radiator upgrade & a PSU upgrade. For selling the 580's @ £450 clear, it was only £186 to go & buy 2 x GTX 670's & I can still run them both on air with decent temps & the PSU I already have. - Ker-Ching! :shades:

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Very nice indeed. That single card is definitely not too far behind the older SLI setup is it. Would like to see what results you get once you have the SLI'd 670's installed.

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Some very very impressive numbers indeed. BF3 is virtually 120fps everywhere.

http://www.kinhell.amibay.com/Kin/Pi...LI-03thumb.jpg

I really don't know what to say. The whole rig plays like an "LPB" should.....
Responsive beyond comprehension & simply stunning, though a Skt 2011 rig would really let these cards fly....

Very nice. But at the moment would you really notice any difference upgrading to a 2011 setup? The numbers would be higher, but when gaming it would probably be hard to tell.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Very nice. But at the moment would you really notice any difference upgrading to a 2011 setup? The numbers would be higher, but when gaming it would probably be hard to tell.

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Well Dave, for & on behalf of the FPS nutters out here, you can never have enough FPS. ;)

Tbh though, I'm really enjoying what I have here atm. It's just a case of set everythng to MAX in the graphics detail Dept & 1920 x 1080 just gets on with it at 120FPS; - VSYNC'd most of the time. :thumbs:

With such a highend setup why not consider upgrading your monitor to a higher resolution? It really isn't giving the system a workout these days at that resolution.

My 27" Dell 2711 has a native resolution of 2560x1440 and every game I play runs on maximum settings with my 2600K and 6950.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

With such a highend setup why not consider upgrading your monitor to a higher resolution? It really isn't giving the system a workout these days at that resolution.

My 27" Dell 2711 has a native resolution of 2560x1440 and every game I play runs on maximum settings with my 2600K and 6950.

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Tbh Dave, the monitor is fine & it is 120Hz, meaning is looks far better @ 120Hz with VSYNC than 2000+ @ 60Hz could ever look, play or feel.

Don't want to sound snotty either, but I can only imagine how laggy your 6950 would feel compared to a single GTX670, let alone two. ;)

Not laggy at all mate... after all science has proved the human eye can't see beyond 60fps anyway! ;)

Most games run around 95-110fps no problems.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Not laggy at all mate... after all science has proved the human eye can't see beyond 60fps anyway! ;)

Most games run around 95-110fps no problems.

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You probably won't like this, but......

The human eye can see better than 60Hz/60fps, at least mine can & a few other select friends who have been in the FPS gaming scene for the last 15 years or so.....
Grab any decent CRT monitor & I can tell you the difference between 75Hz & 85Hz just looking @ the desktop. Throw a 3D game with VSYNC on it & the 60Hz/60FPS is laggy crap, with the desktop flickering like a complete bitch!
If the CRT can sustain 75Hz @ the selected in-game screen resolution, it is miles btter than a shitty 60Hz/60FPS scenario....easy as & 85hz with VSYNC on will give you 85FPS which is smoother still. Flicker on the desktop @ 75Hz is still annoying to me, yet 60Hz on the desktop with a crap LCD panel does NOT flicker. But 60Hz/60FPS for gaming with VSYNC is utter bollocks m8. 60FPS is NOT adequate for a smooth gaming experience. It's quite obvious you are not running VSYNC in your games to claim your low end 6950 card is giving you 95-110FPS no problems. Put VSYNC on to stop the horizontal tearing looking from left to right & your poor monitor is gunno look pathetic @ 60FPS. It will be utter laggy crap @ 60fps & as any serious FPS gamer will tell you, 60Hz/60FPS is not adequate to play games >"Smoothly"<

I was talking to the Spunkster only today about these facts, faced with trying to build a half decent gaming rig for someone who visited yesterday to view my set up. His exact words watching Crysis run @ 75-85FPS with ULTRA settings on 2 x GTX 670's was "F'k me! - I have never seen ANY rig run this game so smoothly" & that doesn't even include the crapness of ATI's shocking VSYNC attempts. Don't even start about the crap ATI driver support, where their latest & greatest releases are still waiting for driver updates some 6 months+ after the cards release.....

Jfyi, Your Dell 2711's native resolution is 2560 x 1440 and only 60Hz @ best, so VSYNC set to ON in any game will limit the FPS to 60, if your card can handle 60FPS @ that resolution. Also, your Monitors grey to grey response time is poor @ 6ms when your 120hz monitors are doing it in 2ms. 4ms is a big difference on grey to grey transitions & how well your 3D gaming experience amounts to.

You also have to ask this of yourself too mate.....
Do you honesty think I'd be blowing all this cash when a single shitty AMD/ATI card could actually do what you're trying to tell me it does??
& I have to answer "No" now to save you trying to wind me up over anything any different mate.

You either accept a few basic concepts about VSYNC/Monitor Refresh Rates with VSYNC/nVidia cards enabled to stop the tearing & enable smoothness or we have to agree to this statement:

"Stay out of my world or you are going to end up seriously pissed off." - The Spunksters words, not mine, ....but he's absolutely spot on. ;)

The last statement there comes from a £60k -a-year I.T. Guy who reckons that a PS3 running the latest gran Turismo has 900 cars to choose from with real-time weather conditions. He saw iRacing running on a Dual GTX580 Rig with £500 of Thrustmaster F/F/back Steering wheel with only 25 cars, no weather simulation (The game is still alpha/beta) yet thereafter, he said GT on the PS3 is utter crap by comparison....

As a last note, I have to add that having all this horsepower on tap get absolutely & completely "SHAFTED" when you try & go online to play your latest investment of £80 for BF3 & it's add-ons. BT totally **** you with a shit low Noise Margin of 6db, leaving your game on a rig of this calibre acting like a ****ing DX66 rig with 4mb onboard graphics.

I sincerely endorse the Spunksters comment on this fact & whilst in a now in a "Stalemate" situation with BT f'kin Wholesale, I have to ask how the f'k that ever happened when they have never spoken to me personally about my shit ADSL & now even shity-er Fibre experience on 750m of Copper wire providing 27ms pings when 3100m of copper wire on ADSL gave me 17ms pings with Interleaving off!!!...... I might as well be sat in the corner of my room & toss myself off ffs! - Meantime, I'll bend over some more whilst turning my wallet inside out during the process...F'kin BS bastards......

Regarding internet connections. Your connection is only as good as the connection from your exchange to the main backbone. You could have a 1Gbps fibre line with an amazingly low ping rate, but if the exchange is still connected by a 10Mbps copper cable to the backbone then you won't get any better than that, and the actual latency will be much higher than you are getting reported from the exchange.

The UK needs to get off its arse and do something about upgrading the whole network infrastructure to fibre. Until that happens we will always be left with large sections of our network running on antiquated wiring and exchanges, and because of how the internet works (breaking everything into data packets.. firing them from source to destinations through loads of different nodes.. then reassembling at the other end) we will always get bad slowdown issues.

Regarding my Dell U2711. Typo on the resolution before (was typing via mobile).. now fixed in previous post/s. I'm not really that bothered about the differences between a few ms. No normal person will ever notice the difference between the two. I'm most interested in colour accuracy and screen real estate. I'm both a designer and a gamer so this monitor is perfect for me to perform both tasks.

I would never use a CRT these days due to flicker (whatever the refresh rate), the power consumption, and the radiation they produce. Some still prefer CRTs but I've moved on. For serious work a CRT will never look as pixel sharp as an LCD in its native resolution. My only exception is when editing SD video as you do still need to preview it on a CRT it see the best results.

And finally, regarding GPUs. As you well know I'm not bothered with owning the best currently on the market. I'm all about the best value for money. The 6950 was just down from the highest performing cards when i bought it (not now but when i bought it the 6970 was the best), and it performs more than well enough for me personally. I'm not bothered if a game is managing 120fps, or 70fps. As long as to me the game is running smoothly and I am enjoying it that is all I need.

I know there are the real high-end enthusiasts like yourself who strive to get the maximum out of what you have, or have to try and build the best currently available just to see what it can do. And it is impressive to see a system running on the highest end gear, but for the cost I personally would rather go for a slight compromise by opting for hardware just below the top, save a lot of money, and spend it on other things.

At the end of the day it is each their own. You always want to have the faster performing PC. I want a PC that performs very nicely, but am willing to compromise slightly to save myself a lot of money as I have other hobbies.

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Not laggy at all mate... after all science has proved the human eye can't see beyond 60fps anyway!
Most games run around 95-110fps no problems.

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sorry the ignorance but, is it or not, that video cards can do more then 100 fps per minute, so if in a certain part of rendering the image cpu or whatever goes slower and needs more power, the frame rate can go down with a safe margin. It the video card does 100 fps, if a more detail part of the level/game do the video card go down, the 100 fps is a safe margin, it could go to 80 or 60 and still mantaine a good level. Am i wrong?

Sort of.

A monitors refresh rate is exactly that. The number of times per second the display can physically update the image. So in effect it is the fps you can physically see. So for a monitor with a 60Hz refresh rate, it will update the image every 60ms, so in effect you can see a maximum of 60fps.

However the GPU could produce 100's of FPS but the monitor will only show show you a new actual image based on the frames at its refresh rate... but the higher the GPU FPS the smoother the resulting image will theoretically be because as you say the software has a lot more overhead to keep running over the refresh rate if the generated GPU framerate starts to drop due to increased load.

If for example the GPU produced 120FPS and your display was 60hz, then every 60ms the screen will update with a new image, missing the ones that it can't keep up with, but this goes unnoticed by the user.

If alternatively the GPU was producing 30FPS, then monitor will still update every 60ms but as the GPU is only producing a new image 30 times per second it would show the same image every 2 image updates as the GPU hasn't yet produced anything new.

A lot of people mention image tearing and vsync. Image tearing is when the image you can see on the screen has a noticeable change within the screen. This occurs when the screen refresh and the GPU framerate are not in sync, so the screen refreshes between frames coming from the GPU resulting in you seeing part of one frame and part of the next, with a visible tear where the 2 parts change on the screen. Vsync tried to fix this issue by syncing the GPU to the refresh rate of the connected monitor, so if the monitor was 60Hz it would try to deliver 60FPS to the display so that the display always has a complete image to display to the user.

The argument over pros and cons for vsync, higher framerates, and higher monitor refresh rates has continued for years. In tests it is proved that most people don't notice more than 60fps, so this is now the standard most monitors are designed to meet. We could argue that this is not true because on CRTs we could see notice the flicker from the CRT refresh rate, and this didn't truly go away until at least 85Hz, but that is equally as much about how CRTs work, because as you know CRTs do not refresh the whole screen at once, but instead draw the image from top to bottom every refresh, so the flicker is also the redraw from top to bottom ever 60+ times per second. With an LCD the whole screen refreshes at once, so you are only seeing complete image flicking, much more like watching a film. This is much nicer on the eyes than the redraw method of a CRT. And can most people honestly say they notice the framerate of a film at the cinema? These run at 24FPS. Cinema keeps at this rate because it is proved that the human eye does not need any more frames per second to be tricked into thinking the brain is seeing full motion moving images. The difference is that film is pre-recorded. Computers need higher framerates because the motiion is generated on the fly and the human eye is good at noticing when something is wrong, so the CPU and GPU need enough framerate to stop the human eye from noticing it isn't real motion we are seeing.

Good info mate, thanks !

@ Harrison

Like I said with Spunksters comment, "Stay out of my world or you are going to end up seriously pissed off."

I also have to ask this Dave. - If you're happy with your setup, do you honestly think your idea of a better monitor making the cards work harder is going to improve my gaming experience? I play FPS shooters & NEED VSYNC enabled to stop the horizontal tearing. So for blowing 700 bucks on 2 x GTX670's, there is no way as long as I have a hole in my ass that I am going to throw a BIGGER screen res at the cards and lock it all down @ 60FPS with VSNC on @ 60Hz. - And just to add to that last sentence, as I said earlier, 60FPS is NOT enough to play games smoothly. It's a simple fact that you either accept because you can't appreciate the difference or because you know no better. I'm sorry to appear blunt, but you already know a spade is a spade with me & there is no animosity on my part either.

You have also over complicated the topic for Tiago & I will merely suggest he re-reads my earlier post. Your answer was sort of right but also wrong in several places so to elbaorate for Tiago:

FPS is Frames Per Second. Minutes are not in the equation in any instance. I run BF3 @ 1920 x 1080 @ 120Hz on a 3D ready LG 23" screen. I set BF3 to run with VSYNC & hold 120FPS everywhere with the AA & Anisotropic all set out to MAX. Occasionally, I see FRAPS, the FPS counter, showing 116 but VSNC is still enabled keeping horizontal tearing out of the picture. In FB3 Operation Guillotine level, disabling VSYNC lets me see as high as 185fps in places, but I never see lower than 125 with VSYNC off, but the horizontal tearing is a bit of a piss off. Adding to this, Adaptive VSYNC is incoporated into these new 6 Series nVidia cards (probably why fraps reports 116fps from time to time) & I'm having to run beta drivers atm to avoid Micro-Stutter. Your statement is sort of right and as Harrison sort of said, ideally, we want to see at least 85Hz or above, though he shoots himself in the foot by making self contradictive remarks saying 60 FPS is enough, whilst also stating 85Hz fickers on a CRT. 85Hz does not flicker for any human eye on a decent Pro CRT & with VSNC set to on @ 85Hz, providing your Graphics card is man-enough to maintain 85+ fps, you won't see any dropped frames.

Now this leads me to Harrisons remarks about Movies. 30FPS is adequate for DVD not to stutter @ 720p & 1080p, but 24FPS BluRay absolutely sucks for me. I've re-mux'd BluRay rips from 24 FPS to 23.86 FPS & play back is smoother? - Can't get my head round why, but the difference is huge. BluRay picture quality is stunning, but the playback is worse than DVD for me. Take Star Trek XI when they are Sky Diving onto that drilling platform: OMFG @ the shaking. Thats 24FPS BS for ya & on the latest & greatest Panasonic Plasma's with this compensation mer-larky, it does help slightly over my now nearly 5 year old Pioneer Plasma, but I still wont by BluRay. I spent £200 on 2 x Chord HDMI cables & the difference of depth of field on my Pioneer was massive for your as supplied £10 HDMI cables. Again though, either you can see it and apprciate it or you can't.

@ Harrison RE Internet:

Yeah, BT really do need to get the f'kin fingers out, but then they also need to stop stealing Noise Margin from customers phone lines so the bloody service runs as intended. BT seem to think that 6db downsteam is adequate, when we all know 5db is disconnection teritory on any DSL/Fibre service & they quite happily suggest we can turn your Noise Margin up to 12 from 6. Are thes pillocks too f'kin stupid to realise that some of us out here know that Downstream or Upstream Noise margin is simply a resultant factor based on length of copper wire, quality of copper wire & the speed applied to it?? - These butt munching a$$holes are ripping off thousands of users in the UK by sharing Noise Margin because of inadequate provision by BT Wholesale & over the last 7 years, the quality of service for Internet Access to this address has been totally f'kd with housing developments. You could be right about some backbones being screwed here in the UK. I'm pi$$ed right off @ seeing less than 100k/sec from the likes of nvidia & Microsoft with a 40+Mb Fibre connection. Summat is seriously screwed & we're paying for it. Grrrrr! :evilmad:

@ Thread RE CRT v LCD Panels:

60Hz on a CRT flcikers for me. 75Hz also does very slightly on cheap brand CRT's but no where near as bad as 60Hz. @ 85Hz, CRT is flicker free, but the caveat for a higher Refresh rate on a CRT is less pin sharp definition. The only reason LCD looks so sharp is because it's 60Hz. Put the LCD out of it's native resolution & the display looks mushy & fluffy. CRT's only get mushy & fluffy over 85Hz on the desktop, yet for gaming, the more Hz-idge you can get, the better the FPS when VSYNC is enabled. Aside from the Radiation worries & the later CRT's were much more efficient at this than earlier years, there is NO banding on CRT monitors & the reason for this is all down to Colour Gamut. Your average home user LCD's do not display from a full colur Gamut so you will always see banding on gradient filled backgrounds & that really narks me tbh. If you do see banding on a CRT, either it's a really crap CRT or the coding in the game is bollocks.

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I've re-mux'd BluRay rips from 24 FPS to 23.86 FPS & play back is smoother? - Can't get my head round why

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The original films are always made in 24p format. However normally they are transferred for the NTSC market first, which as usual decides to be difficult and not stick to standards. They transfer it at a rate of 23.976 FPS. Not far off the original, but annoying just that little bit slower than it should be. Then for the PAL and SECAM markets they speed it to 25FPS.

Therefore for a lot of DVD and BD we are ending up with video that has first been slowed down slightly compared to the original, and then speeded back up to 1fps faster than it should be. This is why we sometimes see motion issues.

A lot more Blu-Rays are however now being released with true 24p support, this should hopefully fix the issue on TVs that natively support 24p playback.

Regarding refresh rates. Yes the human eye can't perceive it flickering at 85Hz but it still is on a CRT. It will flicker whatever the frequency because it is still having to draw each frame from top to bottom, rather than switching the whole screen as one like an LCD.

One thing. You mention you are using a 120Hz 3D LCD. Did you know that these still operate at 60Hz? They need the 120Hz so they can deliver 60Hz to each eye (splitting the 120fps into left and right 60fps halves).

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I also have to ask this Dave. - If you're happy with your setup, do you honestly think your idea of a better monitor making the cards work harder is going to improve my gaming experience?

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As you seem to be focused mostly on just FPS then if you think your setup gives you the best results than fair enough. I don't play FPS that much. I'm mostly into RPG and Strategy games more and for those the extra screen real estate is very much needed. Everyone has a very different set of needs when it comes to the hardware and software we use. First and foremost I need a display that is capable of delivery as high a colour Gamut as possible for image and video editing, and more Dell is one of the best on the market for this (even comes factory calibrated). And for me 60Hz is fine for gaming, even FPS. I honestly don't notice any issues. You might and therefore using this monitor might not be for you, but for me it is perfect.

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One thing. You mention you are using a 120Hz 3D LCD. Did you know that these still operate at 60Hz? They need the 120Hz so they can deliver 60Hz to each eye (splitting the 120fps into left and right 60fps halves).

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Correct, but only when running in 3D, which I don't & have no interest to do so & nor do I want to bombard each eye with a nasty flickering 60Hz.

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As you seem to be focused mostly on just FPS then if you think your setup gives you the best results than fair enough. I don't play FPS that much. I'm mostly into RPG and Strategy games more and for those the extra screen real estate is very much needed. Everyone has a very different set of needs when it comes to the hardware and software we use. First and foremost I need a display that is capable of delivery as high a colour Gamut as possible for image and video editing, and more Dell is one of the best on the market for this (even comes factory calibrated). And for me 60Hz is fine for gaming, even FPS. I honestly don't notice any issues. You might and therefore using this monitor might not be for you, but for me it is perfect.

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If it's screen real Estate you want with high FPS and VSYNC enabled, then you'd run dual or even 3 screens with 120Hz Monitors, but not a dell with 60Hz @ what-ever it's native resolution might be.
I would partially agree with you with Regard to video eding & hight Gamuts, but more so for picture editing or book publishing. The latter of course better supported with Mac's.
If you honestly can't appreciate the difference between 60Hz & 120Hz or greater for a more satisfying gaming experience, then there is nothing I can do to convince you. I've seen people @ huge professionaly organised Lan partys with all the kit to participate in the best possible way, but only running @ 60Hz. After fixing their refresh rates, I never had one person say they couldn't see or feel any difference & 85% of those I did fix didn't even know how to set up their refresh rates correctly or realise that VSYNC makes a massive difference to how their game experince potrays itself. I believe there are now LCD's claiming to do 144Hz, which should throw 72Hz into each eye, therefore helping alleviate damage to the eye with only 60Hz. I can't beleive the industry got away with that one, much like the shocking Sony bastardisation of BluRay @ 24FPS. :rolleyes: