VGA Diff

[beee]

Time to upgrade my VGA in order to run the newest games.

my modest system is the following:

AMD64 3000+
2GB Corsair DDr Ram
MSI K8Neo4 motherboard
Inno3D GeForce PCX 6600 256MB

my budget is around $200 - i do not want to buy myself a new PC, i just want to run games on medium details at 1024x768 resolution without a pain in the **s

I have the following VGas in mind

Jetway Geforce PCX 8600GT 512MB DDR3 w/TV $175.00
eVGA GeForce PCX 8600GT 512MB DDR3 $193.5 (www.quantum.cc)
Inno3D Geforce PCX 8600GT 512MB DDR3 w/TV $233.00
Inno3D Geforce PCX 8600GT 512MB w/TV $163.00

first question: will they run fine on my motherboard ? (theoricaly they should)

2nd question: there is a ~ $64 difference on final price between Jetway and Inno3D 512MB DDr3 cards and $20 between the Jetway and eVGA... i looked them all up on the internet and they all have same clock speed etc etc

So what is the real difference between them other than the brand name ? I am concerned with performance.. I have used all 3 brands before but i have no real clue which is better performance-wise.

Any suggestion ?

No, i am not an ATI fan

[Linen0ise]

Always go with the chipsets. Brand Names are not important when it comes to standards. Also the features: are you really gonna use the SVideo and tv-out functions? Are you trying to get analog or digital tv\cable? Make sure you get a tv tuner card. It redirects all that stuff to the videocard behind the scenes. I'm not a fan of overpriced video cards.

[nihil]

As LinenOise suggests, it is the chipset (and RAM) that matter.

If you look at those price comparison websites you will frequently see a difference of 10% or more from different vendors for exactly the same item.

Also, there will be similar differences between different manufacturers using the same chipset.

Other things to look at are:

1. Warranty period
2. Shipping method and costs
3. Rebates
4. "Free games" bundled with the card (trust me, they are not "free", just heavily discounted )
5. Video management software supplied with the card. There may be a lot of add-ons that you don't need.

I am afraid that it is difficult to decide if one product is more expensive than another because you are "paying for the name" or the other product is cheaper because they are using cheaper other components (RAM, heatsink, fan, etc.)

One thing you can do is search the web for the items you are interested in and look for customer comments. These are the real people who bought the item "off the shelf" so to speak.

Reviews are all well and good, but I worked in electronics/electricals long enough to know that no manufacturer is going to send a POS to a reviewer. They very carefully test and select them, so that only the best go out