I just have to say 9 dollar usb cord! Thats expensive lol. I hope it's USB 3.0. I know I know wasn't the point. Ever since Monster invited Gizmodo to do a Mono Price vs Monster HDMI test in their own labs I have been a monoprice customer. Not that I ever bought anything from monster but the other options are not cheap either for HDMI. Cant speak for all the chinese junk they have but the cables are outstanding. I drove to 3 stores to find out a SATA cable was 20 bucks and left and even with the gas burnt still saved 10 bucks going home and ordering it off monoprice.
My point exactly....
I see this stuff all the time... Audiophiles who claim they can hear --actually hear-- bit jittering in a latched sound chip... measured in nanoseconds... Gamers who argue high frame rates on 60hz monitors... hot rodders who debate the merrits of different paints in their race times... People, this is called "lost in the minutia!" and more often than not it does little more than empty your wallet, which is the manufacturer's intent.
The days when the goal was to provide a quality product to fill a consumer need are over. These days it's all about finding new ways to part you from your money... and most often with expensive crap that, by and large, does nothing new or better.
Coolers are a good case in point... Zalman seems to produce heatsinks artistically, looking like some giant alien flower growing in your computer rather than on any scientific bases... they almost all ignore the primary rules of good cooling...
1) You need MASS pull heat off the device.
2) You need surface area to dissipate the heat.
3) You need airflow to take the heat away.
A long time ago, back when Toms Hardware had just released their "What happens if you take off the heatsink" video and AMD was exposed as a fire hazard, I got into this debate and described a cooling solution for AMD chips that ended up being pretty much what they did with their x64 line... big plate on the chip, lots of mass, tall fins and a decent fan... All very basic, but all based on sound science.
Now NVidia is doing the AMD thing... way too much power dissipation, tiny heat exchange surfaces, inadequate ventilation etc... and, as I pointed out from the start, their performance doesn't appear to be anything to brag about... especially when you consider there's probably very little difference in performance as the price climbs exponentially...
At the risk of over-driving this point. The guy who's computer I fixed with the $35.00 card, went out and bought a far more expensive ATI card and got the same result... It's a common --and painfully stupid-- consumer mistake to think that "expensive equals better", when most often it merely means "expensive".
The one review I'd love to see, but I'm betting no reviewer would ever do is the "How much better is it?" comparison... $35.00 ATI vs $150 ATI... $40 NVidia vs $250 NVidia... just how much more performance does your money get you?
