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Alright so there's a little bit of confusion sometimes, sometimes people
don't really know what Galaxy is, you guys got to remember, Galaxy
is just KFA2, so if you remember the brand KFA2, they're Galaxy,
same brand. They make power supplies, they make video cards, they got
a lot of great stuff and today I'm going to show you their GTX280,
which this one imparticular is their reference version,
so as you guessed it, it's a 280, pretty much stock, all the good stuff,
so check it out. They have, you know, every video card, they offer you a little
something different and usually it's just the graphic on the card,
and well that's what you get here, you get a spider graphic, and that's about it.
But I'll tell you what, you know what, Galaxy's are usually really, really cheap,
they're usually more affordable than some of the bigger brands
and they all come from the same place, so if you're looking for a budget,
you're going to overclock it yourself, this is one that you want to consider.
Because they're simple, they get to the point and they're just factory cards
and they work great. So, let's look at this card,
it's pretty, pretty vanilla-looking I got to say, but it's all about the money
sometimes and check it out, dual link DVIs, dual slot,
it's got all the same good stuff on the inside as any other GTX 280
and it's more affordable and check out all the great
stuff you get in the box, which is important when you're
considering cards that are pretty much just the same.
Here's a seven-pin S-Video cable, here's a VGA to DVI adapter,
here's a HDMI to DVI adapter, which does do audio
here is a breakaway dongle, which goes from S-Video
to compenent and here is the converter for power, in case
you don't have it, those are two four-pin molex
to one PCI Express six-pin power, here's your audio loop cable,
you've got a nice-looking box with a big spider on it,
what more do you want? I mean it comes with
all this great stuff in the box and you're going to get it cheaper.
Now, in case you don't know about the GTX280,
I'm going to go over it with you really quickly, all the specifications
and all the stuff you get on it, so that you know in case you're
comparing it to other video cards. If you already know the GTX 280,
you stop playing this video right now, this is for the people who just don't know.
Alright, so let's talk about some of the spec on a card like this.
First of all, 602 megahertz core clock, so that's a very high number,
that's very good. There's 240 shaders in total,
ok, shaders are what do all the rendering, they do all the
work and there are 240 of them, so that's a big number.
They're at 1296 megahertz, you get one gigabyte of GDDR3, which is a lot,
and it's operating at 2214 megahertz, that's 1107 regular.
So, 1107 megahertz, or since it's DDR3, and it is double pumped,
that's 2214 effective, or DDR. 512-bit interface, so that's
very, very large actually that's a huge interface,
much bigger than the ATI cards you're using right now.
You get PCI Express 2.0, that is the interface,
so you want to make sure that your board is ready for that.
If you don't have PCI Express 2.0, this will fit in PCI Express,
just the regular one, the x16, it will work, but PCI Express 2.0
will be a little bit better, but again, eh.
If you have 2.0 though, you should definitely go for it.
Also, it's important to know that you have to have
a case that's going to fit this card, it's huge ten and half inches
from front to stern, so that's a lot of space, you're going to need a lot
of power too, you're going to need a six-pin and an eight-pin
PCI Express connector, ok? Those are right there.
Now you do have that converter in the box that I showed you earlier,
but that's only going to take care of a six-pin, so you're still going to need
the eight-pin, so make sure you have the right power supply.
You're going to need at least 475 Watts and that's bare, bare minimum.
Most likely you're going to need more like 550 Watts.
You're also going to need a minimum of 26 Amps on the plus 12 volt rail,
and if you want to run SLI, you're going to need even more than that.
You're going to want to be looking at 650 plus Watts and
and I would probably guess around 40 Amps combined
on the 12 volt rail if you want to run SLI. So make sure
that you have the ability to do something like that,
if you're going to go ahead and do it. It's also
dual slot, so you'll need two expansion slots,
not just one, you will need two,
and your case is going to have to be ten and a half inches
from the expansion port to the hard drive cages,
or whatever you have directly behind it, you're going to need
ten and a half inches just to cover the length of this card.
Now, besides the obvious performance that you'd get
with stuff like this, for watching HD movies, for playing video games obviously,
you do have HDCP, which is High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection, and that
will let you stream Blu-rays over the HDMI cable
or over your components to your television, you have
HDMI support, which like I said, you do have
this nifty little dongle that converts to HDMI right there,
and you will want to know, this will transfer sound.
If you want to get sound to your video card, this is a little S/PDIF wire,
it's called the audio loop cable. You pretty much hook this up
from your motherboard, it's sp header or from your soundcard,
and you hook it up, let me show you, you hook it up
right there, it's hard to see, but there's a little tab there.
I wonder if I can pull it out for you.
There it is, you put it right there, that's an S/PDIF, put it right there
and that's going to send 7.1 channel audio through your HDMI cable, to your TV.
It's going to be awesome for gaming, for watching Blu-ray
on your computer, or streaming hi-def movies off of the internet
that support surround sound, this will be very good for that.
You get DirectX 10, which is very important if you are gaming, that's the new
DirectX that they're using for Vista computers. You've got Shader Model 4.0,
you get OpenGL 2.1, if you don't know what CUDA is,
you should look it up, because you also get that,
you get Physx support, so your games look realistic and physical.
You get dual monitor support, so if you want to run two monitors,
you can, those are the two DVIs, they will do 2560 by 1600, no problem.
And, that's a lot of good stuff that you get for a card that is dropping
in price substantially on a daily basis. As newer cards come out,
which they're haven't been any recently, but the whole
battle/war thing that's going on with ATI and NVIDIA,
it's good for you, because in the end you get cheaper prices on products,
and if you're not buying a high-end, you know, more expensive brand
that comes with stuff that you don't need, this card is a vanilla card,
factory reference design, but you can overclock it,
it's cheap, it's high quality and it all comes from the same place,
so, definitely look into it. If you want to save a few bucks,
take a look at Galaxy, the GTX 280, from them, they do have overclocked
versions as well, but did I get everything?
Let me see here, yup. I got everything, I think I'm good.
If you have any questions on it, email me at this address, and I will see you guys next time.
The Galaxy GeForce GTX280 is available from the retailers listed here,
or for more information, you can type in G458-280.
For computertv, I'm Albert.
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