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I wouldn't have thought so Jack

The X1950 cards have appeared on pre-order here, not bad prices for the UK either and cheaper than the 7950X2. UK Forums are calling it one of the most over rated card cards for a long time. The reviews don't put it much ahead of the X1900XT-X, but I suppose once some new drivers are released and CF set up we might see what it can really do. bit-tech Anandtech Firingsquad [H] Driverheaven What this has done though is force down the price of the X1900 range. In the UK you can pick up a X1900XT for £210 and an XT-X for £250. Before the release of these reviews, I was thinking of chosing between the 7950 and X1950, but after some reading and then seeing the recent price drops I have just ordered the XT which should arrive tomorrow. Happy reading. Jack

I have a 17" LG LCD and a 19" Samsung LCD. Both have an optimal resolution of 1280x1024, but the 19" is much better IMO. If you can afford a 19" one with good specs, I'd say go for it? Jack

Have a read of this I've not done this myself, but worth a go. Jack

Good luck AMD. I know what you mean about online retailers. I live about 40 mins drive from here and about 90 mins drive from here. Both of these online retailersretails have sales counters I have used and returned goods to in the past. They are not the quickest counters by any means. To have an item checked and confirmed faulty and for them to produce you a credit note can take 2hrs. Sometime there is even a little over them wanting to RMA it and for you to wait for the refund. But I do hate it when I order elswhere to save a few £'s, only for the item to be DOA or alike and then have to post the item back and wait what seems like ages..... Jack

Have you got yours on order Spooky?

I have had the Artic Cooler and the Zalman fitted to my X800XTPE. The Zalman Cooled the best at full fan speed but was slighly noisier than the Artic cooler which is near silent. Leaves ther hot expelled air inside the case Artic Cooler Has cooling for the ram, but it doesn't seem that effective. Made the overall length of the card longer and obstructed the SATA ports on one of my hard drives (I have an Antec 1000AMG server case). Pushes the hot air outside of the case Had to use ATI tool to ensure the fan ran at 100% I am using the Zalam due to the problem with my hard drive. Both take up the adjacent PCI slot and are very good coolers. Jack

Moon, I've got the XP90c on myAMD and the Zalman 7700cu on my Intel. Both are very good at cooling. The advantage of the Zalman is you don't need to buy a fan, and it's near silent on lowest settings. The Xp90 possibly cools better, but alot will depend on what fan you buy with it. In a nut shell, you can't go wrong with either. Jack

The only problems I've had is the dreaded 'The instruction at xxxxxxx reference memory at xxxxxxx the memory could not be read' I didn't get to the bottom of this common problem. But it could have been one of a few things 1. loaded windows when OC'd too high 2. page file corrupted 3. loaded HL2 when OC'd too high 4. corrupted graphics driver I didn't re install windows, but deleted my pagefile, defraged, then created a new one, I also changed my AGP size to the lowest, defragged and then put it back to 128 I think. deleted driver with drive clean and re installed them It was a real pain in the Artic Silver 5, but I've not seen it for a while now :touches wood: Good luck Jack

Solaris, I have a X800XTPE, and the stock cooling was a little loud and my temps were idle 42ish and under load around 70 odd. I installed an artic silencer cooler and the temps went down to 36ish at idle and 60ish at full load. The problem I had was that the silencer is quite long and interferred with one of my hard drives requiring me to move the hard drive to a bay that wasn't fan cooled. I wans't too happy with this so replaced the silencer with the Zalman. The temps I get now slightly better that with the silencer and no obstruction to my hard drives, although the noise is slightly louder at 100% than the artic silencer, but I run the Zalman at lowest speed unless gaming etc and see no real temp rise. Another thought is your memory temps, I know the artic cooler has covers for the memory which the Zalman doesn't, but I have covered mine with OCZ Ramsinks which do the trick Jack

4gig of ram is a heck of a lot, what do you intend on using your pc for. If it is normal use such as benching or gaming I would suggest 1gig is enough. Read up which brand works best with your CPU/MB and get that. Timings I would suggest is better that quantity. I had 2gig as I though it would give me more speed when using large spredsheets, editing photos and video. Although I found very little difference when I went back to 1 gig. I did however notice a speed increase when I got some OCZ Platinum Rev2 though with better timings Jack

any programs running your not sure of you can look up here and here