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arctic silver ceramique.

lasts a long time. AS5 will dry out in a few months, so you'll have to re-apply it more often. ceramique is designed to be semi-permanent, in other words, its good for like a year and a half.


also, the 8800GT can be found for as low as $230.

check the HOTDEALS section at www.hardforum.com. its at the bottom of the forum list. and you don't need a membership to see it.

seriously though, I expect the price premium on the GTs to roll off in about two weeks. just keep a sharp eye.

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get arctic silver ceramique.

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the stickyness should not ever be a problem because you should never have to actually touch the paste.

put about 2/3 to 3/4 a grain of rice sized dollop onto the middle of the processor.

install heatsink.

slightly twist heatsink a couple degrees each direction as if you were opening and closing a lid on a pepsi bottle.

done.

and the stickyness actually helps you cuz it sticks to the processor better when you are squeezing it out, so you don't really have to do any crazy body english to get it out the way you want.

and yeah, ceramique is a semi-permanent solution. whereas AS5 dries up sometime after 6 months.

if you changed out ceramique every 1.5 years, you'd be doing real fine.

go ahead and get AS5, its fine stuff, it might net you an extra degree off your temp, but ideally you'd need to be changing it every six months.

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you could try walking into a bestbuy and seeing if they still have some in stock. they were carrying the BFG brand one for a pretty fare price.

for some reason I feel like you'd have a better chance than finding one online.

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this is considered the best 22. that's a pretty great price too. no 22 is going to absolutely blow you away because they don't use a great panels. but, some of them are better than others, like this samsung actually produces colors quite well and overall has a pretty damn good image quality. the two major downsides to tn panels are that they have the worst black levels and vertical viewing angles are really bad. though this samsung gets all of the attention, I have and like the gateway 22 the best. its image quality is just as good, and it includes component, svideo, and composite hookups making it very versatile. it also has a faroudja video processor in it. but...its probably the most expensive 22.

if you want image quality, for $250, you are going to have to get a 20 inch.

**actually, it seems that you can't get a better panel than a tn---at all, unless you are willing to spend like $350 or more.

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in my oppinion, 1680 x 1050 is perfect on a 22, but is too high of a resolution for a 20 inch. it would annoy me. I would get an 19 inch over a 20.

now, regarding TN panels (which is all you can get for $250) the vertical viewing angles are most likely not going to bother you at that size, because you'll be sitting pretty close. but...it might.

now about colors. since you say you are sort of a video-phile, you might never be happy with a TN. they have the worst color reproduction and the worst black levels. though, some modern TN panels have pretty decent color reproduction, but it takes a bit longer to coax it out of them. I spent a long time with the color settings on mine before I was happy with it, but i'm actually quite happy with its color reproduction. the biggest problem with TN and color is they tend to have either a pinky red or an orangy red. making human skin look either really pink or like tan in a can. it took me a long time to figure out how to tune this out, but I did and now I'm very happy.

black levels are never great on a TN. some are better than others, but even the best suck. its just something you have to live with, or spend more on a better panel. its only a major issue when running stuff that isn't native resolution. like dvds. Blu-rays though, look great and i've so far haven't had a problem with black levels in Blu-ray movies. gaming it can be a problem in really dark games. especially at non-native resolutions.

the advantage of TN are they have gread response times.

and about running games at non-native res, at 1680 x 1050 or lower, a resolution of atleast 720p looks just fine as far as image sharpness and resulting aliasing. so as long as you can run games at a 720p resolution (1280x7something or 1280x800) then you will be good.

any samsung model ending in *BW is gonna be one of the better TN that you can get, so i'd go for one of those. like this one

i'd go to best buy or something if you can, and try to compare a 1680x1050 20 inch to a 19inch 1440 x 900 to see which you will prefer.

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that monitor appears to not be a TN. also Best-Buy is selling it for too much. the official gateway site says $230. you may want to go to a best buy and check this monitor out. they might still have last years model too, which has cool touch controls (my 22 has them) for the OSD.

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