Customized computer?

[Board of Command]

If you're running a high end video card, then your processor is probably able to handle h.264 no problems already. Also, why you're playing 1080p videos on a computer monitor is beyond me. And this is not your computer, it's a list for naruto=pwnage. I think he'd be happier with 30 more frames per second while saving $50.

Oh and I forgot, my 6600GT also has h.264 hardware decoding and SM3.0, so it's more future proof than X850XT?

And on the topic of SM3.0. I'm pretty sure the 6600GT is the first card to support it, and it has been out for almost two years. Look around today and you'll see that still very few games support it, and the ones that do support it all use SM2 by default. I got my 6600GT over a year ago and at the time the only games supporting SM3.0 were Farcry (via patch and tweaking) and Chronicles of Riddick (which nobody cares about). Today, there are still very few games that support it - not even Counter-Strike Source supports it. SM2 isn't about to fade out in the next week. As of now and maybe couple years down the line, SM3.0 will just be a little bonus for the games that do support it, as most won't.