I’m considering buying a graphics card based on the nVidia 6600GT chipset with 128MB of DDR3. It’s going to be the last upgrade for my aging AGP system before I treat my wife to a full-system upgrade to the newer major standards out there (PCI-E, SATA-II, Socket 939, PC3200, etc.). This graphics card has to last me a while!
I’ll be ordering through Newegg, which has a great RMA policy, but I’d also like to get a card by a manufacturer with a good reputation. The cards are currently priced between $140 and $190, so there’s almost a 30% difference in what manufacturers are charging at each end. I’ve seen prices as low as $120 (and I’m willing to wait a few weeks to see if it happens again) so the difference could approach 50% for what appears to me to be the same product. Here are my questions:
Do I lose anything by buying the cheapest card based on a given chipset?
Are there manufacturers who are so well known for quality that it’s worth an extra $20 - $40 to ensure that I get a card that will last?
Some cards, you need to dig below the ‘big’ specs. Also, some manufacturers (I think BFG) overclock their cards out-of-the-box, so they’re more expensive.
Last thing to look at when comparing is software packages. Some cards come with multiple full version games (usually 6-12 months old); on others, you’d be lucky to get a driver disc. nVidia sets the standards, so most boards are very similar.
Other than some bells-and-whistles type stuff (dual DVI, VIVO, etc.), you don’t really lose much IMHO.
The only thing I would mention is that in addition to OCing cards out of the box, BFG also has a true lifetime warranty on their products. I had a fan on an old Ti4200 develop an annoying rattle and they replaced it with a ti5600 or so (I forget the model number, but it was pretty much the same level product the next generation up).
Of course, if this is going to be your last AGP purchase, that probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to you, as I don’t imagine they’d replace a dead AGP card (if your card does, indeed, manage to die unassisted) with a PCI-E.
But surely ATI doesn’t manufacture nVidia’s GeForce 6600GT chipset… do they? And even if they did, who would buy ATI’s version of their biggest competitor’s chipset? No, I’m set on the GeForce 6600GT, as per the OP.
Heh, no ATI doesn’t. I think he was pre-emptively speaking against anyone who may have had the nerve to present the X800XT as an option around that price point.
