Richard Longfellow
CAGiversary!
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OK, I just spent a few bucks and upgraded some stuff on my AMD PC this week. One part of note was the video card, which I think is neat because I had never heard of the brand before last weekend when I saw it on Newegg for $55 with free shipping. It's made by "Sparkle Computer," which immediately brought to mind the "Mr Sparkle" Simpsons episode. 
Anyway the card I bought (below) is really well made, the heatsink is high quality and it's a huge gain over my old fanless 7600GS, and actually runs cooler with my games on high settings. I'm not running Crysis or anything, but I have maxed out AA/AF on my recent games like Tomb Raider Legend, and the card handles them well. (That was something the NVidia 7-series didn't do well).
It's a budget card, so I didn't get much in the way of cables or literature, and I used the latest NVidia drivers to set it up (learned from experience not to fool with card manufacturer's drivers).
Anyway the point of all this is if anyone is looking at cards and sees a Sparkle brand piece, give it a tumble.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187034
Also I should recommend the DVD burner I picked up (below). I guess I was way behind the times with my old HP DVD burner, because I had no idea optical drives had improved this much. The LG has the 2MB of memory, and it's super fast and dead silent other than the laser gears seeking (kind of like a quiet Dreamcast). Anyway, great non-BluRay drive if anyone's looking for one cheap.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136152
Anyway the card I bought (below) is really well made, the heatsink is high quality and it's a huge gain over my old fanless 7600GS, and actually runs cooler with my games on high settings. I'm not running Crysis or anything, but I have maxed out AA/AF on my recent games like Tomb Raider Legend, and the card handles them well. (That was something the NVidia 7-series didn't do well).It's a budget card, so I didn't get much in the way of cables or literature, and I used the latest NVidia drivers to set it up (learned from experience not to fool with card manufacturer's drivers).
Anyway the point of all this is if anyone is looking at cards and sees a Sparkle brand piece, give it a tumble.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187034
Also I should recommend the DVD burner I picked up (below). I guess I was way behind the times with my old HP DVD burner, because I had no idea optical drives had improved this much. The LG has the 2MB of memory, and it's super fast and dead silent other than the laser gears seeking (kind of like a quiet Dreamcast). Anyway, great non-BluRay drive if anyone's looking for one cheap.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136152
