GT 430/520 or GTX 560 Ti

[deanjo]

"300W to 80W" huge.

In comparison to each other the difference may look huge but in the overall picture of things it is relatively small. Like I said, you would have more of an impact on your energy bill just by swapping out incandescents.

I had good friend, with hobby in home cinema, and his plasma did burn out.

And a buddy of mine does warranty repair jobs for both. Guess which fails more, it isn't Plasma. Lots of dead/stuck pixel issues with LCD. I also have a couple of plasmas from 2004 still going strong.

your forgot to add "recently". LCD was available in fullhd for years already.

I wouldn't say for the last 5 years is "recent".

Yeah BIG deal, if you are not living alone. Wall-montage mechanism for 200kg vs 100Kg costs more, you will have to perforate 4x 12 wallplug instead of 8x 14. Less damage to wall, easier to cover. That is in case you use wall-montage. Otherwise, your furniture will say thanks. Maybe sometimes you say that yourself if current orientation and position does not appeal to gf/wife/you suddenly.

lol I hung my 64" plasma myself (74lbs) and I'm hardly a large man. Hell my old 24" Sony CRT weighs more (107 lbs).

Nope. Brilliant pixel-free smooth picture combined with low power drain over complete period.

Lol, most videophiles would disagree.

[jalyst]

Not, the 560 consumes more power than the 520. There's no way around that.

Are you absolutely certain of this?
I could've sworn I read that they now have the smarts to turn-off all parts used exclusively for 3d acceleration, & hence lower their envelope to the same as the lowest VA only parts.

Better in every respect? Of course not. The LCD will be worse in at least three respects: black depth, ghosting/blurring and (depending on panel quality) viewing angles.
None of these is generally an issue - the human eye is a surprisingly adaptive organ. The best approach would be to view panels in your price range with your own eyes, and pick the one that looks best to you.
Hint: ask for the remote control and reset the display mode to normal (most panels are usually set to "presentation" mode in the store, in order to make them look better than they are - you won't be using this mode at home, so try to see how they really look).

Yeah I didn't think so, I vaguely recall from readings ages ago, that there's still some qualities Plasma's maintain a lead in for some time into the foreseeable future.

I will the do the physical testing you suggest, but I've very little time to do that justice, so I want to at least narrow things down to one display tech.
Then I will physically compare TV's using that display technology (after I've narrowed them down to a shorter list).

For "bang for buck" IQ, which would you pick & why: Plasma or LED LCD?
(I don't care about power consumption, or purported reliability levels)

However, search online for "[TV model]+problems" before you buy. Many models have specific issues that may or may not affect you (for instance, many Sony models artificially limit VGA signal to 720p even when the output device is capable of 1080p).
If you intend to connect a PC, make sure you can completely disable "dynamic contrast", "motion interpolation" (i.e. 120Hz upsampling mode) and check that the TV doesn't have too high input latency (some models have been known to have >60ms of input latency which is both visible and annoying in games).

Some excellent tips, I will definitely be sure to look out for these traps!

Also this: http://www.cnet.com.au/plasma-vs-lcd...-240036500.htm

Thanks, have a closer read, now!

[jalyst]

@deanjo, thanks for chiming-in mate!
If you've got a few minutes, I don't suppose you can address these Qns:

(1)
You clearly believe Plasmas offer the best overall IQ for all applications...
In what ways are Plasmas unequivocally "the best" compared to other readily available consumer display technologies?

(2)
Are there some big negatives in going the Plasma route? (aside from power/heat/durability claims)
Aren't Plasmas generally way more expensive than similar sized LCD's etc?

(3)
Which IYO is currently the best 1080p Plasma at approx. 42"?
I'd prefer to stay @42", but if that means cost will be much more than $2k...
And in order to maintain the best IQ, then I'm prepared to go sub-42".

(4)
Do you know of any excellent resources that compare the best consumer display techs etc?

Thanks heaps again everyone!

[jalyst]

*See for yourself*
Generally, the card has several (at least three) power modes, each of which can be forced. There is no overclocking possiblity for 4xx/5xx via nvidia-settings now, one of the reasons is to downclock idle mode even more. You can patch card bios with one windows utility and write the Mhz you want directly inside. This may however nullify warranty, if you won´t reflash the card bios back prior to rma case or if your overclocking/underclocking would cause that RMA.

Damn, I swear I read that there's much more smarts now...
Such that top-end cards have idle & VA power very close to that of the lowest-end cards?
There's been huge improvements compared to previous generations, alas it's not quite perfect yet

I will check some more sources to be sure of all this myself, thanks
It also sux that they've deliberately crippled easy OC'ing & no longer support it
I guess they've done that to ensure lower power, they should still leave the option there for power users!

I have 42" Toshiba REGZA series LCD TV. Watchable from all angles, very deep contrast, around 170W consumption, 200 Mhz motion filtering, Linux powered (linux kernel, gcc, glibc, even gnu license), can read usb sticks, integrated DVB-C with CA-encryption slot.
Modern OLED LCDs do not have permanent backlight, but produce on-demand. As result, they consume as little as 80W.

I don't care about built-in Linux/DVB-C etc, I have a HTPC coming that'll take care of all that, & more.
I also don't care so much about power consumption...
As I'm devising a HA/HE system that will cut my power bill markedly, so if TV power goes up, no "biggy"
But the overall IQ sounds good, not sure how well it compares to a similarly priced Plasma though.

This is good EU price-comparison site, <SNIP>

Thanks mate I'll have a closer look to see if it's useful.
Thanks again very much for your thoughts/time, tis very much appreciated!

[Jimbo]

Better in every respect? Of course not. The LCD will be worse in at least three respects: black depth, ghosting/blurring and (depending on panel quality) viewing angles.

Outdated, modern LED LCDs have "corrected" those issues and matches , or even surpases, plasma quality.

Also this: http://www.cnet.com.au/plasma-vs-lcd...-240036500.htm

Outdated, the article (on September 23, 2009) is analysing plasma vs standard LCD, the correct analysis should be plasma vs LED LCDs.

Read http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/

[deanjo]

@deanjo, thanks for chiming-in mate!
If you've got a few minutes, I don't suppose you can address these Qns:

(1)
You clearly believe Plasmas offer the best overall IQ for all applications...
In what ways are Plasmas unequivocally "the best" compared to other readily available consumer display technologies?

Places and examples of scenes where I see a lot of issues on lcds are in accurate colour replication and gradients. This becomes very noticeable in dark scenes or scenes where there is a scene full of the same colour with very slight hue changes (such as a dim under water scene). There also still seems to be an advantage with plasmas when it comes to watching fast action sports with a lot of motion on it. LCD's have improved quite a bit over the years with this but still lag behind plasma even with the "240 Hz" LCDs. The problem with many of these LCD's (especially cheaper ones) are as well that to achieve these faster refresh rates they are sacrificing the colour spectrum and using TN panels and suffer from all the negatives of a TN panel (reduced colour depth, limited viewing angles)

(2)
Are there some big negatives in going the Plasma route? (aside from power/heat/durability claims)
Aren't Plasmas generally way more expensive than similar sized LCD's etc?

I really depends on the size and quality of the tv. When getting into the larger sizes (50+ inches) plasmas are usually at the same price level or even cheaper then the same capability lcd. The only real downside to plasma that I have seen over the years is image retention when leaving it on a static picture over a very long time. Newer plasmas now days have protections against this (screen savers, pixel shifts, screen wipe routines on start up) and really shouldn't concern the average home user. If you are planing to run a static billboard however then you should go LCD.

(3)
Which IYO is currently the best 1080p Plasma at approx. 42"?
I'd prefer to stay @42", but if that means cost will be much more than $2k...
And in order to maintain the best IQ, then I'm prepared to go sub-42".

With plasmas you actually want to start looking at 50"+ sizes to get the best image quality. This is the size where most plasmas start having full HD resolutions (with the exception of a few 42" Panasonics). Unless you are going ultra high end you won't even come close to $2k in a 42" display.

(4)
Do you know of any excellent resources that compare the best consumer display techs etc?

Thanks heaps again everyone!

To compare the individual brand "features" I haven't really seen a resource like that. Most brand features are simply fancied up names for industry wide used techniques and technologies. AVS forums have excellent resources where the features are discussed and consumer reports usually has very good write ups on the features in their yearly electronics buying guide.

[AlbertP]

For environmentalist people: when displaying light things, plasma consumes much more Watts.

But for dark scenes, plasma is consuming less. That's because LCD always consumes the same amount of energy (when the brightness setting is the same), and plasma's consumption depends on the light needed to display a scene.

[jalyst]

Thanks deanjo, I'll respond to your post soon!
What are your thoughts on Jimbo's post?

blackstar
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...878#post209878
crazycheese
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...888#post209888

If you can spare a few minutes to respond to my last responses to you I'd be most grateful.
No "biggy" if you can't right now. Thank-you/night all!

[chithanh]

I know I'm late to the party, but in the DX10.1 days, the lowest end cards (G 210) did not have the shader punch for all of the postprocessing options. So if you get a GT 520, make sure the things that you want and go beyond pure decoding actually work.

[jalyst]

Not a worry, as mentioned in earlier posts I'm definitely getting a 560 Ti now.
But thanks...
If you know the answer to anything else not yet answered, please do share.
All the best.