I imagine I'll only ever run one video card. I figured I'd make it one of the new Radeon cards, since I've been happy with the performance of the one that's a couple generations old.
Up until recently had a nVidia EVGA E-GEFORCE 7600 GT PCI-E 256MB VGA DVI-I HDTV Out.
I love the nVidia for performance. After the first few months the fan was making loud noises (failing) so i bought an aftermarket fan (Zalman) and things were good. After the 3 year warranty ended this past June, a month later the capacitors popped. Dead card for 3D (2D will worked ok). I contacted eVGA and complained saying "hey, one month after the warrenty ends i have issues? Come on."
They allowed me to return the vidcard with all parts intact for a replacement equivalent.
Well dammit if i had kept the failed fan from 3 years prior i would've been fine, but i guess i threw it out not having considered a possible returnable product scenario into the future (I could have returned it for a failed fan but really, i would've got another unit with the same crappy fan design so why bother?).
Before that i had Radeon cards, usually All in Wonders (tv tuning).
Fans never failed but the buggy drivers, glitchy performance and crap customer service had me screaming constantly. I know other sites and people use them, love them but i just have had no luck. I vowed never to buy another one again. I put nVidia into two other machines, worked solid.
So after this eVGA died, what did i do?
I was convinced the best price performers were the new Radeon 4000 series compared to what nVidia was selling at the time, so i couldn't bring myself to buy a nVidia. I should have just thrown out the extra $150, but i over analyzed the situation.
Now, i have a Radeon 4850 and the fan is dying, my computer halts on shutdown and occasionally won't come out of standby. Upon reboot i get m/b error beeps indicating a vidcard issue.
Only by powering off the psu for 30 seconds and trying again (sometimes with multiple attempts) does it finally boot normally.
Everything works fine once booted though.
No BSOD, no random reboots, no 3D glitches, etc. However, the fan is failing (the ONE thing that never happened with ATI before but did happen with nVidia cards now seems to be a shared flaw; crappy fans).
So WTF??
I'm going back to nVidia; change out the stock fan and feel better about stability or rather, consistent performance.
I also thought I'd stick with Corsair for a power supply. I imagine the 850-watt HX model would be a pretty safe bet.
I love the Corsair HX psu i bought.
Detachable cables.
Quiet fan.
Beefy unit.
Pretty good efficiency (see reviews on Tom's Hardware).
