The guys at the Tech Report have posted a ton of pretty scatter graphs, which, to me, anyway, say that the 9800GTX is one hell of a value. If you're into the whole dual-card setup, the 9600GT SLi is apparently the way to go.

"Thanks to our latest round of graphics card reviews, which culminated with the massive GeForce 9 series multi-GPU extravaganza last month, we've ended up with enough benchmark data to paint a fairly complete picture of today's mid- to high-end GPU market."

Video Cards

Foxconn 9600GT-512NOC @ Futurelooks

Diamond Viper HD 3650 1GB @ OverclockersOnline

RAM

Patriot Viper DDR3-1866 2GB Kit @ TweakTown

Audio

ASUS Xonar DX PCI Express 7.1 @ HotHardware

XtremeMac Tango X2 @ DigitalTrends

Cooling

Coolermaster Z600 @ ChileHardware

Coolermaster LED Silent Fan @ XSReviews

Etc.

Opera 9.27: Part II @ OSWeekly

Enermax PRO82+ 525W PSU @ HardwareSecrets

I couldn't agree more. nVidia certainly has flooded the market with parts lately. Not that it's ever a bad thing to have a SKU for each market segment, but I think nVidia's heading more towards two or three per segment. I disagree on the Inq's posit about model numbers, though; I'm thinking more about GT vs GS (each SKU having three different amounts of memory to choose from).

"Given that Nvidia so desperately wants to become a big boy chip firm like Intel, expect the revamp of the naming scheme to produce an utterly incomprehensible numerology that can only be understood by scholars of ancient mathematics. Soon."

It's been nearly three months since the release of the ETQW 1.5 Beta, and though the update hasn't been officially released, there's now a devblog post that details the changes in 1.5. I'd say the beta stage is nearing its end.

Meanwhile, the maps from the flash-based version of Valve's extremely popular Portal puzzle game have been ported to an unofficial map pack for the retail game. I've personally played through several user-created Portal maps, & a few of them are excellent additions.

You can win a pair of 8800GS SLi cards over at Motherboards.org just for filling out their contest form. Two XFX GeForce 8800 GS 384MB DDR3 XXX cards, to be precise.

Or, if you're more in the market for a shiny new case, you could win an NZXT Tempest over at OCIA. This is the case that really resembles Antec's 900 - plenty of blue fans and airflow. This contest is forums-based; you need to be a member, & post a pic of your case or work area, and the crappiest submission wins. Hah.

I'm sure you've read at least one nForce 780a motherboard review by now. LegitReviews goes a bit deeper into what makes the 780a chipset special: Hybrid SLi. They explain the tech, & include some benchmarks.

"Having the ability to turn off the discrete graphics at will is one of the coolest new features we have seen on a PC. It's amazing that it took this long for someone to figure it out, but the time has finally come."

Notebooks

Hyper Sonic AG2 @ techPowerUp

Motherboards

ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe @ THG

Power

NESTEQ ECS7001 700W @ TechwareLabs

Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 460W @ HardwareSecrets

Etc.

Sans Digital MobileSTOR MS2UTN+ RAID Enclosure @ ASELabs

Opera 9.27: Part I @ OSWeekly  NZXT Tempest Case @ 3DGameMan

Sleek Audio SA6 Earphones @ CoolTechZone

Canon EOS Rebel XSi @ DigitalTrends

USB 2.0 Computer Copy Cable @ OCIA

Razer Destructor Professional Gaming Mat @ ThinkComputers

CoolIT Systems PURE CPU Cooler @ TweakTown