on Sat February 7 2004 12:16 pm, Timothy T. Doran decided to enlighten us
with:

Don't buy an ATI 9600XT based video controller unless it is a genuine
retail ATI 9600XT, as most other "builders" using the 9600XT chipset have
not followed the reference design, used old PCB's that were "in stock" to
rush product out for Christmas holiday, and have not enabled the ATI
"OVERDRIVE" feature.



I too was "duped'" by C.P.Technology Co., Ltd. aka/dba in United States as
Power Color USA Corp. in purchasing a R96A-C3T in a new system I had built
by Future Technologies International, Inc. (FTI), Great Neck, NY about two
weeks ago, who is an "authorized" distributor/reseller" Power Color
products.



The cost to me between the Power Color R96A-C3T and a genuine retail ATI
9600XT was less than five dollars, but I went ahead with the Power Color
Product since it seemed to have a better bundle. I was not aware that
there were any differences in the cards, as Future Technologies
International, Inc. (FTI) web site (as do most other resellers) still to
this day state the fact that the Power Color R96A-C3T has "OVERDRIVE", as
does C.P.Technology Co., Ltd. Main web site, only in the last week has the
Power Color USA Corp. web site quietly removed the statement about the
Power Color R96A-C3T having 'OVERDRIVE" ability.

I snipped the rest of this nonsense. Why would you buy some brand you've
never heard of over a quality, reliable brand to save $5? That was lame
brained.

Secondly, I guarantee that if you buy an Asus brand card you'll be getting a
very reliable card that'll do everything they claim it will. Same goes for
anything made by a top tier 3rd party like Abit, MSI, Gigabyte, Leadtek,
Chaintech, and others.

I know in the business where margins continually shrink, the big players
today may not be in the market this time next year and the new big players
will be companies I've never heard of. Visiontek used to be the biggest
vendor of nVidia cards, but they went bankrupt, only to return making Ati
cards later under new ownership. You should stick with a company that you
know of their products and their reliability record.



--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
12:00am up 0:31, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.08, 0.15

My Windows XP machine uptime:
Something less...