MaximumPC 2007 11

118 MAXIMUMPC NOVEMBER 2007

We tackle tough reader questions on...

PVista SLI PMaximum PC’s Website

P30-inch LCDs PStock Coolers

NVIDIA NVECTIVE

For eight months now, PC enthusiasts have been

waiting for Nvidia to come out with stable drivers

for SLI in Vista, only to get apologies and be told

to please “just be patient.” My question: Where

are the exposes that point out the downright

shame of the situation? Now we’re hearing rum-

blings that the 8-series will probably NEVER work

well with Vista. The workaround? “Revert back

to old drivers [that do not support SLI] while we

work on the problem.”

Now BioShock is out, with a big ad for Nvidia:

“Nvidia, the way it was meant to be played.” So I

guess BioShock with Nvidia cards was MEANT to

be played with NO overclocking and NO SLI. This is

pure BS. I guess I can expect the same limitations

when Crysis comes out.

PC enthusiasts did not put all that money

into dual cards only to be handed a bunch of BS

from Nvidia. If I didn’t know better (and maybe I

don’t), I would say Nvidia is deliberately screwing

around with weak drivers just so people will get fed

up and buy into its next-generation 9-series.

Please, if magazines such as yours would

expose Nvidia and its failure to support its custom-

ers, maybe it would get the picture. Meanwhile, we

have one card working... that is hooked up with

an SLI bridge to an expensive doorstop. Thanks,

Nvidia, for ripping us off.

—Jeff Nicely

SENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH UNG RESPONDS:

While I think the driver situation in Vista is pretty

piss-poor today (which is why our Dream Machine

’07 sports a dual boot), I highly doubt that Nvidia is

not supporting the new OS. The more likely answer

for the subpar performance of games in Vista is

the huge workload the company’s driver writers

are under. BioShock, for example, supposedly gets

a healthy boost from a new beta driver that ups

single-card and SLI performance by double digits,

and those one-off drivers don’t write themselves.

I do feel your pain, though; anyone who unloads

$1,600 for a pair of Ultras should get ungodly per-

formance. Hopefully, the situation will improve as

more titles ship and Vista drivers mature.

WEBSITE WHINING

I cannot understand why your website is so difficult

to use. Given the quality of your magazine content

and the obvious talent of your editorial staff, it does

your magazine a great disservice to be so poorly

represented on the web. Case in point: Why is your

Best of the Best information so difficult to unearth?

Oddly enough, I don’t keep a copy of your mag with

me at all times, so I would find great value in being

able to refer to this list online. I can’t find it on your

site, nor can I find the components on the list via a

search, unless I have the list in front of me

and can search for the exact text. It’s silly.

Please take some steps to address this

and bring your website up to the same standards

as your find magazine.

—Scott Daunheimer

EDITOR IN CHIEF WILL SMITH RESPONDS:

We really don’t like to do anything half-

assed here at Maximum PC, which is why

we stripped down the feature set to the bare

minimum for the relaunch of our website.

Rather than add sections like Best of the Best

in an incomplete way that would be difficult

Boo on Your

Budget PC

I’ve been reading this mag-

azine for years and usually

love it, but there’s one thing

that ticks me off. Regarding

the $500 PC competition you

recently had [October 2007], I’m

offended by the lack of a real attempt

to build the best PC for that price. In

particular, I was amazed by the lack of a case

on one and the obvious lack of research into

what makes a good low-cost PC. If you’re

going to try to build a budget PC then get

people who will try to do it for real.

—Bill Lake

ASSOCIATE EDITOR DAVE MURPHY

RESPONDS: We based our challenge on

what parts could be purchased from a

retail store precisely because we didn’t

want the feature to turn into an arms race

of Internet deals. We wanted to level the

playing field from a hardware perspective,

and not just compete to see who could

in outYOU WRITE, WE RESPOND

find the cheapest Athlon 64.

That said, we wanted to give readers

options in a DIY format, while still showing

our enthusiast readers what happens when

you try to push a budget machine to its limits.

It’s unfortunate that, in this case, the limits

came pretty quickly.

In regard to the lack of a case, we’re all

about performance here at Maximum PC. At

the time, I thought I’d be better off spend-

ing my case budget on a faster CPU, more

RAM, and a nicer videocard. Unfortunately,

in practice, my plan didn’t work as well as I

had hoped.