Originally posted by clickwir
Then my take on things would be:
1) find out just how much you want to spend.
2) Go around to some websites and find Nvidia cards (ignore ati) that are +/- $20 of what your looking to spend.
3) Re-evaluate how much your looking to spend. Either increase, decrease, or stay the same.
4) Repeat step 2.
5) With the card/model. Go around to some MORE websites and price it. If most of the prices are mostly the same, skip to step 7.
6) If they are largely diffrent, then go with the 3 lowest priced places. And go back to step 3.
Why go back to step 3? Cause if there's some place that has the card $50 cheaper than anywhere else... maybe better to go with the next model up.
7) Made it this far? Good. Go back to step 3. Make sure it's what your looking to spend. Adjust if needed. Make sure you figure in shipping and handling. If your sure you want it, step 8.
8) Buy it. wait..... then enjoy.
Crazy? Yea. I use these steps whenever I buy something. Online or off.
Some sites to check for prices.
www.newegg.com <<My fav!
www.accessmicro.com
www.mwave.com
www.tigerdirect.com
www.bestbuy.com
www.circuitcity.com
www.compusa.com
www.walmart.com
www.frys.com
www.pcconnection.com
www.cdw.com
www.microwarehouse.com
Good site for searching other sites:
www.pricewatch.com
www.pricescan.com
shopper.cnet.com
www.streetprices.com
i would've said the same praise over nvidia before they released the FX series. each and every FX series card is pure crap and ATI eats them alive every time. if you are looking for an nvidia card, get at least a Gforce-3(not MX, they bite worse than the FX series cards).
as far as ATI, i will say one thing about them. they are very solid cards once you get a driver that's not buggy, but buggy drivers are to be expected of new to the market hardware. i have a radeon 9800 pro and i love it. the picture quality is so much cleaner than the nvidia chipset cards i've seen(gforce 3/4/fx). all in all do what you wanna do, but don't limit yourself to one brand. do the research and look at the benchmarks. 8xAGP owns nvidia