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Which would be better to get, the 630 or the 820?

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1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs

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256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) nVidia GeForce 6800 [add $180

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Which would be better to get, the 630 or the 820?

Ignoring price, I'd say the 820. You effectively get two complete CPUs, albeit both of them being somewhat slower, as opposed to a slightly faster processor that pretends to be two CPUs that helps out sometimes with two processes that aren't similar. As to whether that's worth $100 I don't know.

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1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs

Don't buy extra RAM from the Dell configurator. You can get it much cheaper elsewhere. In fact, you can get it cheaper from Dell if you buy it separately, but I'd just get it from somewhere else anyway.

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256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) nVidia GeForce 6800 [add $180

The cheapest I see a 256MB 6800 for is $270, but you have to give back the 128MB X300 SE, which I see for $48. I don't know. Sounds like a decent deal to me if you like the card: $180 for something you probably couldn't otherwise get for less than $222.

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Hm. Where do you get it cheaper? I tried Crucial, but that isn't. Where do you get quality memory for a good deal?

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I've read that the way to go is either the 6600 GT or the 6800 GT.

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To be specific in this case, Dell is charging you $130 to upgrade from 512MB to 1GB. On NewEgg, you can get 1GB with the same specs from quality manufacturers for less than $100 (Kingston ValueRAM, since that's been mentioned, for $105). That's well less than half price.

Dell themselves will sell you that 1GB of memory separately for $130. That's half price. Basically, that means that they're charging you $65 to plug the additional stick onto the motherboard.

If you want the least price and hassle, order that additional 512MB stick from Dell separately. That way you don't have to deal with reselling the other stick or another retailer. I don't know enough about DDR2 memory to tell you if having matched memory modules is better.

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That's a good question. The 512 I was looking at was a single stick, but the 512 preinstalled might be two. I don't know if that would work or not. Four 256s would work (assuming there are four DIMM slots). The only drawback with that is that it makes it harder to add more memory in the future.

Regardless, even if you bought 1GB from NewEgg and threw the preinstalled memory away, you'd still be doing better than getting the memory upgrade from the Dell Configurator.

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NOTE: Memory purchased from Dell is covered under your computer warranty.

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Really? Where are you seeing this? Is this just what you're seeing in Windows in the display settings? Because that would mean it's only showing resolutions your monitor supports.

I'm looking at that card on Newegg, and I'm pretty sure it'll support that resolution (as I would expect a $350 card to do). This is the card you have, right? That page claims it supports up to 2048x1536 at 85Hz.

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Yup. I have the same card and was able to select 1920X1200 over DVI without making any modifications. I was pleasantly surprised.

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I'm confused, that thread you linked (more specifically that post) was a post where someone replied to a person like you, who was awaiting the 2405 and wondering about the resolution stated in the BFG FAQ (was this actually you?). The person's reply is that they have the exact same card and they can display 1920x1200 without any problems. Am I missing something?

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I think the thing you should be more concerned with is that, if you're a hardcore gamer, you won't be getting anywhere near the best FPS when playing at 1xx0x1200. I'm not hardcore at all, so I bump it up as high as it will go as long as it keeps it above ~30 FPS.

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800x600 would work fine with a 1600x1200 and still be sharp because 1600x1200 is an integer multiple of 800x600. It's where the pixels don't scale up precisely is when you have the problems. That said, new panels are pretty good about scaling and it might be good enough for you. Old ones used to just do crap nearest neighbour interpolation and it looked really nasty.

As Digan17 said, you just need to try it out. It may be acceptable for you.

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I would hope that a 16:9 LCD sent a 4:3 signal would just put black bars on the sides, but I have no evidence, personal or anecdotal, that that's the case.

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Half Life 2 isn't really discussed or featured, so I'm guessing it can't do 16x9.

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I would hope that a 16:9 LCD sent a 4:3 signal would just put black bars on the sides, but I have no evidence, personal or anecdotal, that that's the case.

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Hm. So if that were true, then Half Life 2 (sorry to be stuck on it, but Loren and gang got me totally excited about it, and now it's my holy grail) should look fine at 1600x1200 with black bars.

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Half Life 2 isn't really discussed or featured, so I'm guessing it can't do 16x9.