The videocard battles

AMD/ATI is set to release their new video cards very soon to open up competition with NVIDIA. Despite this it behooves one to wonder how you should properly judge the performance. There are presently no Direct X 10 version games available for MS Vista. Futuremark is preparing a benchmarking software for Direct X 10 which is not yet available. I assume you could make benchmarks using available games but this would benchmark games written primarily in the old platform of MS Windows XP. For users of Windows XP this would still be a good choice of benchmarking but what about MS Vista users? How will they be able to know which video card (NVIDIA 8XXX series or AMD/ATI) will bring best performance to Direct X 10 and MS Vista? I suppose we'll have to wait until games like Crysis are released to make such a judgement.

LCD for PC Monitor Sales

For several years now there has been a race of sorts by LCD screen manufacturers (for personal computers) to make the fastest speed monitor or who can make a monitor with the best resolution, or the largest size. I personally believe that there is now going to be a new form of race involved with LCD PC sales.

A few months ago most LCD manufacturers were nearly equal across the scale in terms of contrast, resolution, color, and price.

I personally feel that there will be a change in the industry marketing to focus on one element that has been overlooked. There are two words here:

DYNAMIC CONTRAST

Probably the best way to view an example of how dynamic contrast can make a difference is to place several LCD PC monitors side by side playing a video. The LCD PC monitor with the highest dynamic contrast will probably be the most vibrant.

Consumers have been focusing on speed and resolution for their purchasing decisions for a while now. Over the past few months I have noticed more consumers in the stores talking about color and contrast. It is vital that sales personnel become acquainted with the terms static contrast, and dynamic contrast. They must know the difference between the terms.

There has been a push for 'bigger is better' as well. Consumers want bigger LCD PC screens, but they are paying more and more attention to rich color definition. In other words when comparing LCD PC screens customers are now looking at colors as well as resolution and monitor size. This makes perfect sense since many consumers now view movies and video on their LCD PC screen.

An LCD PC monitor with a dynamic contrast ratio of 3000:1 will make an LCD PC monitor with a dynamic contrast ratio of 700:1 look poor by comparison. Or at least that is my personal view.

For some time now I had been using a 17 inch monitor and it worked quite well for me. It was time to upgrade the monitor so I decided to do some comparitive shopping. After viewing several monitors in my favorite store I could clearly overhear two customers speak to a sales representative about the rich colors on one monitor as compared to another one. They asked the sales presentative what the differences were but the he did not know. I knew what the answer was to the customer's questions but I decided not to butt in on their conversation. The two customers purchased the monitor which appeared to them to have the richer more vibrant color, despite the fact it was more expensive. The monitor of their choice which they purchased had the highest dynamic contrast but the sales representative didn't know that.

Needless to say I purchased a 20 inch LCD PC monitor with a dynamic contrast of 3000:1. It was 20 percent more expensive than its competitors but you get what you pay for.