It's definetly leaner and faster than vista, but I use many diferent software (multimedia, graphics, video editing...) and some won't work. For example Asus AIProbe Motherboard monitoring software on start gives error and after that load CPU 50% which should be 2-4%... I guess that's the purpose of beta - to find and exterminate errors.
Nice mice... I do have a thing to say about this review... It does not include any hands-on information, did they realy try them one at the time or just put specs and pictures. Personal preference could maybe translated as advertising one of them, but a real test would be that a few real-life gamers swaped them around and tested for some time and say which and why was choice.
Seriously, good gaming on PC is becoming so expensive. If you want to play games with just a decent framerate and better graphics settings you must actually have a PC that's worth almost like a car - some 2000-3000$. I say that is a scam just so that industry big players can make more money. Like the games them self aren't cheap and hardware manufactures keep going at us for more. The only solution is to play games that are one or two years old and even then the PC would cost at least 600-900$.
The cheapest way to upgrade is of course to buy second-hand components. You can probably find a powerfull 1900XT or 7900GS from someone who is upgrading to next gen 2900 - 8800 and it probably cost around 130-180$. Upgrading RAM to more than 1Gb is also a must for nex-gen gaming.
Well if I had money to burn, I would probably buy one of these, but... High end high performance video cards are only here so that manufacturers can compete who has the fastest one. Actually the most profits they make is in the low-budget market, but for us - the gamers - the mid range mid performance is the most interesting. There you get the most bang for dollars. Those benchmarks are of most interest to me.
bboyart's comments