Which brand of graphics card do you prefer?

[Murky]

If you're going to fork out hundreds of dollars for your video card, you probably should spend a little more to get a top-notch cooling unit for it. The factory fans aren't made to last forever and they don't dissipate enough heat when the GPU is under a constant heavy load like when playing a 3D shooter. Some people are even going with water cooling to keep the temps down.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

If you have a top notch video card, you most likely have a very hot running processor and chipset as well, meaning you want a few case fans or even water cooling. That should be a given with any extreme performance system.

 

[PureEvil]

Without meaning to sound rude or anything, but stock cooling is normally good enough for a long time if cleaned properly and everything and looked after, you generally only need the extra cooling if your overclocking. Water cooling is over the top considering GPU's can take temps of over 100 degrees. (mine can, and i know alot of cards do, but i dont recomend pushing it!)

 

[BirraImperial]

Nvidia is the best. I've owned both and I think Nvidia delivers the best performance. I have a Geforce 7600 GS 512MB and it runs Civ4 BTS just great. Haven't really tried it playing high end games. I used to have an old Geforce 2 MX440 64MB and it even played Doom III with low settings fine. So Nvidia is the best, IMHO.

 

[warpus]

If you're going to fork out hundreds of dollars for your video card, you probably should spend a little more to get a top-notch cooling unit for it. The factory fans aren't made to last forever and they don't dissipate enough heat when the GPU is under a constant heavy load like when playing a 3D shooter. Some people are even going with water cooling to keep the temps down.

See, that would void your warranty.. and as somebody else said, you're wrong; you don't need upgrade the cooling unless you're overclocking.

 

[kingworldss]

I usually prefer nVidia Geforce

 

[Murky]

See, that would void your warranty.. and as somebody else said, you're wrong; you don't need upgrade the cooling unless you're overclocking.

Some cards come over clocked with stock coolers so I'm not wrong. I've witnessed it happen to someone else.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

nVidia has a cooler name. Victory is mine.

 

[warpus]

Some cards come over clocked with stock coolers so I'm not wrong. I've witnessed it happen to someone else.

I'm curious enough to ask for links to sites selling video cards that come overclocked out of the box.

 

[Zelig]

I'm curious enough to ask for links to sites selling video cards that come overclocked out of the box.

It's common practice, all the major manufacturers sell their cards clocked over reference specs. (evga, bfg, zotac, xfx, etc.)

However, it doesn't make enough of a difference that anything beyond a stock cooler is needed. Nvidia and AMD know what they're doing when they design reference boards, and companies know the risks when they offer lifetime warranties. The main attraction point of aftermarket cooling for video cards is decreased noise, as stock solutions are often quite loud.

 

[warpus]

It's common practice, all the major manufacturers sell their cards clocked over reference specs. (evga, bfg, zotac, xfx, etc.)

However, it doesn't make enough of a difference that anything beyond a stock cooler is needed. Nvidia and AMD know what they're doing when they design reference boards, and companies know the risks when they offer lifetime warranties. The main attraction point of aftermarket cooling for video cards is decreased noise, as stock solutions are often quite loud.

I have an eVGA 8800 GTS 640mb. It isn't overclocked. The fan is adequate and very quiet.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

I had a 6600GT that came overclocked. The tiny fan was louder than my aftermarket cpu fan. The fan broke and I replaced it with a much bigger Zalman fan that was much quieter. Its not a necessary upgrade but its a slight improvement that can be really appreciated if you keep your desktop in the same room that you sleep in.

 

[HAND]

I have a Geforce 6800 GT 256mb which still runs all my games well so i voted nvidia. I used to have an ATI Radeon 8500 64mb years ago which managed to run BF2 ok on low settings.

 

[mdwh]

Voted NVIDIA as their latest drivers still support Windows 2000.

Also ATI's OpenGL support doesn't seem to be as good (e.g., see http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=464090 ). The lack of stencil buffers for framebuffer objects was a pain for me (in practice, this means no high dynamic range (HDR) rendering).

They also don't seem to support GL_MULTISAMPLE_ARB, which means that anti-aliasing must either be always on or always off (so you can't say, have the graphics anti-aliased, but with foreground text still being sharp).

 

[Strider]

Voted nVidia. The cards are pretty nearly equal to each other in performance, but nVidia has superior drivers and software.

 

[dragokatzov]

i was a very loyal ATI fan boy for a very long time. Then I bought my new comp with a x300 in it. i knew it was going to play games badly, but it had terrible linux support,. so i got my current geforce 6600, and it work fantastically under linux, and well, been hooked on nvidia ever since. I was disappointed in the HD 2XXX series, they were suppose to be the nvidia raper, or so i read in some reviews before they came out

 

[FriendlyFire]

I own an 8800 GTS 640 SLI, which actually crapped out on me, it's being RMA'd as we speak.

It was pretty sweet though, before it died. Before that I used to stick to Radeon cards.

someones LOADED. I hate you

 

[Abaddon]

I ahve a history with Ati, so i chose Geforce...

 

[Maniacal]

My NVIDIA GeForce 7900GT with 256 mem runs Half-Life 2 on high settings quite well. (With 1 gig of RAM and a single core 2.2 gz AMD Athlon 64).

I plan to get an 8800 after Nvidia releases the 9000s and the prices drop.