MaximumPC 2005 10

MA XIM

UM

PC

’s

VIDEOCARD

BUYERS GUIDE

Confused? Bewildered? Vexed? No

problem—Maximum PC has the

answers on choosing your next vid-

eocard for today’s and tomorrow’s

games! We break down the specs,

put the jargon in laygamer’s terms,

and show you exactly what to expect

from high-end setups like SLI or

CrossFire. Plus, a massive videocard

review roundup!

USING WINDOWS

MOVIE MAKER 2

If you’ve been nervous about getting

your feet wet with video editing, now

you’ve got no reason to avoid it: We

walk you through making a complete

movie out of your footage, using soft-

ware you already have right there in

Windows XP!

PLUS: A SURPRISE

BIRTHDAY PARTY!

It’s been 20 years since the birth

of a near and dear friend! We’ll peer

through the mists of time, and toast

and roast someone we all know

and love.

COMING

NEXT

MONTH

IN

LETTERS POLICY: MAXIMUM PC invites your thoughts and comments. Send them to

[email protected]. Please include your full name, town, and telephone number, and limit

your letter to 300 words. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Due to the vast amount of

e-mail we receive, we cannot personally respond to each letter.

drive capable of doing the same thing with
DVD-R, all we can say is “eh.”
We haven’t heard of anyone who’s
working on or even backing the idea of a
double-layer rewriteable disc. Not only does
it add another format to an already brutally
long list, but it’s almost certain that double-
layer rewriteable DVDs would have extremely
poor compatibility with set-top devices, if
they had any at all. We suspect the confu-
sion comes from press releases announcing
upcoming “double-layer rewriteable DVD
drives,” which mean they’re capable of writ-
ing to write-once double-layer discs as well
as to single-layer rewriteables.

APPLE AND INTEL SITTING IN A TREE
After reading “Apple’s x86 Invasion” (Release Notes,
August 2005), I’m super excited. Apple’s move to the
x86 architecture gives us what power users have
always wanted: a viable OS choice. Sure, Linux is
an option, but the average computer user is never
going to give up the simplicity of Windows for the
Penguin. OS X will give us all the power of Unix
wrapped in an innovative, proven shell.
I’ll happily pay a premium for Apple’s incred-
ible hardware and software design to have one
machine that lets me boot into Windows XP for my
Battlefield 2 or City of Heroes sessions, and then
live in OS X for everything else.
I’m glad Apple is finally getting the attention
it deserves. If nothing else, the gains Apple is
making should at least prompt Microsoft to start
addressing some of its problems. Apple does it
better—always has. I think the Intel move will
allow more people to realize exactly that.
—Ken Higginson

SET KONFABULATOR FREE!
Not sure if you guys know, but the best program
ever created ( Konfabulator ) is now free because
the company was bought by Yahoo. If that weren’t
enough, anyone who bought the 2.0 version is get-
ting a full refund! That’s what happens when the
best program gets better.
~Benjamin Budzak

UPGRADE-THIS
I must say that I am impressed with nVidia’s
new GeForce 7800 series. But I’m not impressed
with this GPU’s ability to produce high dynamic
range lighting, or its new programmable
shaders. No, what amazes me is nVidia’s ability
to shove out a new card that no one needs.
These $600 cards create nothing but shinier

water, more shadows, and useless artifacts in

games that hardly utilize the existing hard-

ware’s full capabilities. When will we stop being

impressed by an extra ripple on a puddle splash,

or a wrinkle in someone’s face in exchange for a

$100 jump in the price of videocards?

—Joe Amato

WHERE’S <INSERT MY FAVORITE

UTILITY HERE>?

I was disappointed you didn’t include Eset’s NOD32

Antivirus software in your August “23 Computer

Cures” feature (August 2005). I’ve had great luck

with NOD32 finding viruses that other antivirus

apps miss. NOD32 also uses fewer resources,

which is a big plus for gamers.

I was also surprised you didn’t include

Microsoft’s AntiSpyware application. While it’s

still beta software, it’s very stable and finds tons of

spyware on computers I use it on.

—Kevin Allen

I recently browsed through your “23 Computer

Cures” article in the August issue. I was quite sur-

prised to notice that you did not include a review

of the free version of AVG Antivirus in either the

antivirus or freeware section.

What gives? In the past, you gave this soft-

ware a Softy Award and now you’re not even

reviewing it.

—Mark Harrer

EDITOR IN CHIEF WILL SMITH RESPONDS: One

consequence of running a big utility roundup

is that everyone writes in afterwards to tell

us about the great utilities we left out. While

we’ve used NOD32 before, we didn’t realize

it was as popular as it seems to be from the

number of emails we’ve received about it. We’ll

definitely take a closer look at it at some point

in the future.

Microsoft’s AntiSpyware is a valuable tool,

but it’s still beta (the version currently posted

on Microsoft’s website expires at the end of the

year). Furthermore, it won’t install when you

boot into Safe Mode, while Spybot does. We

like Microsoft’s AntiSpyware app, but it’s more

of a supplement to your other spyware apps

than a replacement for them.

As for AVG, the fact that Grisoft has buried

the freebie version so deep on its site that the

only way to find it is to use a search function,

and given the newly restrictive terms of the

license (you can’t use it in a networked envi-

ronment), we bumped it off of our list.

OCTOBER 2005 MA XIMUMPC 107

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