I updated my workstation - new video card and new massive LCD monitor
My new video card is a Sapphire HD 4870 2GB Vapor-X Edition. It is a custom designed card using the ATI Radeon HD4879 on a special PCB with solid capacitors and "Black Diamond" chokes, and with a vapor and heatpipe cooling system. The fan is very quiet, yet the card stays very cool (relatively speaking). It has a Dual Link DVI, an HDMI, and RGB/VGA ports. But the real reason I got the card is that it has a 2GB memory buffer. This doubling of the normal maximum memory configuration does not help that much with gaming, apparently. But the memory does help with photo editing and movie editing. For example zooming in at very high resolutions and flipping through photos at 100% is nearly instantaneous. Other photo/video tasks are also greatly enhanced as well.
My new monitor is the 30" Dell Dell 3008WFP. The resolution is 2650x1600. It takes just about every type of input, including s-video, VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, and Displayport (Apple Macbook Pros and my Dell Studio XPS laptops are probably the only PCs that have this Displayport one standard, except for some high-end video cards. It is the 'new standard' for PC video). I waited and waited until it was on sale, and it still cost a fortune. More than most sub 50" TVs
But for a photo video workstation this is what the doctor ordered. $1400 was what I paid and it is now back up to $1700. But most feel it is worth it if you are using it for this. Gaming is actually not as good on this monitor, apparently, as on some 24 or 26" monitors. There are 30" monitors that are closer to $10,000 out there. I am very happy with the 3008WFP.
This is a 2.1 megapixel photo taken with my old Coolpix 950 at 100%...
...and this is a 12 megapixel (4288x2848) photo taken with my D90 at 50% - notice the CD balanced on the LDC monitor frame for scale
...and this is the same photo at 100% - someday maybe I will have a 70" monitor
One flaw with my workstation - my motherboard is not ideal. It is good in many ways, but the Clear CMOS jumper is located
under the video card. This is a double-wide card, but I think many cards could be a problem in this regard. So when I changed some setting in my BIOS such that my system would not boot, I had to lift up the 40lb. case onto the table, remove one of the covers, remove the card and jumper the pins, then put everything back together. Some new boards that allow you to screw up the BIOS settings have a Clear CMOS button on the external interface area of the board, or at least in a better location on the board. I recommend this type of board!
I really like my Cosmos case. It is silent and cool. Not the coolest or quietest case for crazy overclocking of every component maybe, but in my setup it is great.
