Yeah, sony has a gpu based on the nvidia g70, so since geforce 8800's are out now, it's got a previous-gen graphics card as well.

Anyways, they *are* next gen consoles, it's just their graphics cards are not. Anyways, you wonder why it only costs $400 for an xbox and around $900 (well it can be much more if you have the money) for an awesome gaming rig? Well... try playing something that's multiplatform and very hardware intensive (e.g. oblivion) and look at the xbox graphics vs. the PC graphics with an 8800 in it. B)

No. I can't seem to get past the "This device cannot start(error:10)" errors. I think my PCI bus is too s***ty to run it.

I do have 2 of the cards going though(one AGP and one PCI) so I have 3 monitors(dualhead AGP card)

lol what, no. You're friend is a noob. Vista can use multiple cores to it's advantage better than XP but that's all. Good thing too, it's so frickin' resource hoggin'. (Of course a better OS would be one based off gentoo or ubuntu... )

Anyways, the point was, (to quote an old meme) I think it doesn't make a bit of difference guys, the balls are inert!

he is a total tool but unfortunately he seemed to know what he was talking about. to quote an old president: fool me once, shame on.....shame on me........fool me, can't get fooled again.

anyway, vista sounds like it isn't worth buying and i should just use my xp sp2 correct? oh btw, i too am making a computer.

Spengo yes I know. Omg though Oblivion is so graphics intensive that I went to a gaming place called nerv center. The computers there were awesome with like 1600x1200 CRT monitors that ran all these games at Max settings.

Quake 4, Quake III Arena, HL2, Wolfenstein: Return of the somthing, Counterstrike Source, Doom 3, and Unreal Tournament 2007.

The minute that I went to use Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls. The framerate was unbearable. Moving looked sketchy and there was a lot of frame skipping and everything else. It was just plain horrible.

Halifax, just FYI, it is tried and proven: Windows Vista runs directx9 games at lower fps than XP. Especially some particular games. I had a lot of problems with source engine games. CS:S and HL2 were running at like 20fps (at crappy settings) and lower and I was like omg ow. In XP they both run around 40fps at 1680*1050 with 8xAF and 4xAA so I was pretty disappointed. Anyways, Valve fixed that with a recent patch, but I don't have vista installed on anything to mess with it atm. I don't think it greatly affects the framerate of most stuff, just like 2fps lower or something. Won't notice anything at all with an 8800 in your computer lols.

Also, if your monitor is only 1600*1200, there is no point in an 8800GTX. 8800GTS 320MB will run everything out atm at max settings at that resolution without a hitch. And yes, oblivion is ridiculously resource hogging, but even that game will run fine on those cards methinks. But yeah, my radeon x700 which runs HL2 totally maxed out is made of PHAILURE at oblivion. Of course, it's also partially 'cause I only gots 1GB ram in this lappy and oblivion wants at least 1.5 to run well.

I too am building a new computer and I intend to put Vista on it. Mostly 'cause I get it for free from my college so what the hell, eh? =) I will dual-boot with Vista and Sabayon 'cause I never tried that particular distro before (based on gentoo) and it looks really good. Besides, I don't have to worry about Vista eating battery life on a desktop computer right? (my main beef with it atm)

Also, wtf @ wolfenstein: return of the something lol. I've never heard of that. Do you mean Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory? That's a free game that will run on a computer built 8 years ago you know. You can probably play that on the computer you have now! Quake III Arena is ancient as well lol, and they can't have had UT2k7 'cause it isn't out yet. I believe you mean UT2k4 (which ran maxed on me olde 9600XT hehehe). Anyways, it sounds like their computers were *about* the same specs as my laptop, perhaps a little less just as a random guess.

You need ta get stuff into perspective man! You've been with an ancient computer for too long, this upgrade will be a good thing! I mean seriously dude, athlon x2 over a core 2? (craayzee, it's pretty unanimous c2d ownz it. I mean, who told you ax2 was good, an AMD salesman? lol) q3 arena has good graphics? (when was that released, 1999?) 1600*1200 is high resolution? (well it's high enough for me, but not fancy uber of dhoom high hehe. It's about medium-ish these days) XB360 has a geforce 8800? (lol wut... not even close on that one) SO the point is, use your googles and hang out on irc 24/7! (it's what I do ) increase the geek levels! You're scarin' me with all these geek thoughts from a decade ago! (it also leads me to think you are gonna totally wig out from the sheer awesomeness of the graphics when you build your new computer Me too as the 8800GTS is about 6-7 times more powerful than my x700, we shall have much fun times!)

...holy s*** that's a long post o.o

Basically that's all it is so far. They say it's more secure and stuff, but there's already vulnerabilities being found. I expect it will be about the same as XP in that respect. Also o.o @ $2k monitor. Personally I think 1680*1050 is large enough and was going to buy a $190 20" acer LCD on newegg. (acer makes great screens for the price) Of course, I wouldn't settle for any LESS than 1680*1050 these days either. If you want uber-quality, probably a sony or a dell would be your best choice. I know Nikky from #tcpa swears by the Dell monitors and he's totally into photography and ridiculously high image quality. It kinda depends on what you want to do with the monitor though. Some of the uber-high quality image ones tend to have slightly slower refresh rates. For games as long as it's 8ms or under you're fine though - no ghosting. If I had enough moneys to get a really high res monitor, I'd probably get http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009113.
And if you have an extra C-note, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176059 looks really nice. And http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=us&category_id=4009&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&nf=177~0~174494,58~0~193,4723~0~266594&~ck=anav&navla=4723~0~266594 are the sexy Dell ones.

OpenGL runs like s*** in Vista. Darwinia wouldn't run more than like 5fps. (it was totally unplayable on Vista. I think they made a special windows vista version of the game) Of course, that's why you make your computer dual-boot with windoze and linux. OpenGL ftw there. nVidia also has really good Linux graphics drivers.

EDIT: oh I should add, I was impressed with one other thing in Vista. Microsoft finally FINALLY got a decent search algorithm. I mean seriously, in XP it goes through every file one-by-one WTF. It's a simple search algorithm, get it right people! hehe

EDIT2: Oh you said $2k limit right? Well if you're feeling REALLY rich, get one o' these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176071
O_O Now THAT's a resolution where you need all 768MB of video ram that the 8800GTX has. :<>

Nice! I still like LCDs though. =)