Ok so I need to decide once and for all if I'm getting rid of the GTX275 (whilst they still go for good money) and forget all notion of gaming on the PC (I have an Xbox too) or keep it in case I want to play any new games or even go back and complete Crysis/have a blast on ARMAII. Bear in mind its also been about 2 months since I plated ANY game on the PC.

My head says cash in, my heart says keep the GTX.

What I dont know though is what card (if I do sell it) to replace it with? I want something cheap otherwise its not worth the effort and it wont need to play any games (if I'm dropping PC gaming I'm 100% dropping it). I dont have blu-ray so that doesnt matter. I guess the requirements are:

1) cheap
2) quiet
3) handles Photoshop well enough and possibly video editing in the future (not to any serious degree in terms of special effects, etc)

Ideas?

A 9400GT or 5450 would work fine.

The 9400GT would be better for photoshop due to CUDA & hardware acceleration (with CS4)

Just ordered a 5450 for my machine (the 8600GS is on the way out). Passively cooled and uses less power than the nVidia equivalent. I haven't used ATi for a few years, due to poor driver experiences (see my other thread). I should get the card tomorrow.

Just put a 5450 on a machine for a client. Seems to work well, I've got one to put in my htpc as well.

I think the 5450 is the way to go. I've just got to pluck up the courage to abandon PC gaming. Its like giving up smoking. Or a leg.

Buy a mac?

YES!

That is exactly what I want to do - and am hoping to do in the next 2-3 months - if they can iron out the reliability issues.

I went with the 5450 from Dabs for £40.71 including delivery

http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-ati-ra ... -6LB8.html

GTX275 will be sold soon. Bye bye pc gaming

I bought 2 of that model the other day.
Tested one with bluray yesterday & it was sweet. Just takes a while to get used to ATi's control panel.

When will the low end Nvidia Fermi cards be out. I know the next CPC hardware podcast won't be online until tomorrow because of an NDA. Will it be the Fermi NDA? and if so, how long until the low end cards come out?

Mine is still sitting in the boot of the car... Will be fitting it when I get to work this morning - using my home machine at work at the moment, that's one of the reasons I always insist on Professional instead of Home versions of Windows on all my machines...

Plugged in and working. The colours seem a little more vibrant than with the nVidia 8600GS. The VGA output (Saphire model) is a little close to the top of the expansion slot, so the cable doesn't fit properly and the output on the second 24" display was a little fuzzy.

I'll see if I can get an HDMI to DVI adapter at some point...

Doh! Turns out it was a Gulftown NDA.

Its in and working. On first reboot after the driver install there was no video output (DVI or DSUB) although the PC sounded like it was posting. A quick BIOS reset fixed the issue (which also means I've lost all my stable overclocking settings so I'm back to stock speeds).

It seems to work fine for what I need now. A large image in CS3 'tears' a bit when I move it around which never happened before. Maybe its the new card or mayve its going from 3.2GHz back to 2.4GHz (with slower bus and RAM speeds too). Either way its not a massive issue and the almost silent running of the PC now is worth it.

I've uninstalled all my games (apart from World of Goo and Team Fortress 2 as I havent uninstalled Steam) so I'm not even going to test it in that respect.

It'll do until I get my Mac