Brands to stay away from?

[wjgollatz]

I am looking to build an inexpensive desktop, and looking for a graphics card in the $40-$65 range. In that range I have found quite a few nVidia GeForce 8400 through 9400 cards. Many of these cards are brands I never heard of, like Sparkle. (These Sparkle cards have a radiator cooling, not a fan)

Are there any brands I should stay away from, or any particular cooling method I should stay away from?

 

[xdarkfluxx]

First off I would actually recommend you get a ATI/AMD card instead. One in particular is the Radeon HD 4650 they cost around 60bucks but benchmark much higher than even a Nvidia 9500GT.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102805
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814150346

With the issue with brand in a perfect world it really shouldn't matter, they should all be following Nvidia/AMD own guidelines for the GPU. But in reality some brands just make crap that fail (good brands are Sapphire, XFX, EVGA, BFG but the best way to make sure is to look at reviews). I hae never heard of Sparkle until recently, apparently they are another taiwanese hardware manufacturer, like we don't need enough of them these days. They have been around in Asia for a while but I believe they are new to the USA market. Also stay away from heatsink only cooling even though you are looking at low end cards they still generate quite a bit of heat.

 

[wjgollatz]

Have ATI cards improved in comparison to nVidia? The only real gaming requirement I have right now is a mmorpg, and ATI cards always had the most problems. I dropped my subscription for now, so I can not access the forums for the game (eve-online). It could have been the programming of the game also.

 

[xdarkfluxx]

I haven't had any problems from ATI cards. They are generally cheaper than Nvidia cards. Its just Nvidia's highest end cards almost always beat the highest end ATI card even though they often have $100 price difference. But yea for your price range I would defiantly get the ATI 4650 it consistently out preforms the Nvidia 9500GT, sometimes by 20 FPS.

http://www.madshrimps.be/vbull...sted-57425/#post223129

Not sure what your problem with EVE-Online is but their website says their game is supported by basically all ATI cards. It could be you were running an old driver.