Eventually, the massive performance increases we saw in high-end graphics cards would cascade down the GPU makers’ product lines, into their “mainstream” cards. We knew, though, when NVIDIA and ATI introduced their new 16-pipe high-end graphics chips that eventually the other shoe would have to drop. With Doom 3 on the loose and Half-Life 2 just over the horizon, it’s enough to make a grown man cry, or to make a grown man’s wife disown him for charging a mortgage payment’s worth of hardware on the MasterCard. These expensive toys have tempted many of us, no doubt, but generally, a graphics card that costs 500 bucks is a bit of a reach for most folks.

New Pentium 4 Extreme Editions, Athlon 64 FXes, and especially 16-pipe graphics cards like the GeForce 6800 Ultra and Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition have dominated the news and reviews. W E’VE BEEN HEARING constantly, all summer long, about fancy new high-end PC hardware that’s bat-out-of-hell fast but worth more than the GDP of Lithuania.

Ge x600 camera vs canonsx500is