Suzanne wrote:
Hi everyone, I am a newbie. I want to buy the nVidia 6800 GT that my boyfriend wants for his birthday, but there are so many
brands. What is the difference between them? Why are some more money than others when it looks like the same item? I did a
little hunting and the only thing I could find was some ppl said the BFG brand has a bad heatsink or something. I also looked
on newegg.com and saw that all the cards look the same, but the PNY brand doesn't show that has DirectX 9C, it only has
DirectX 9. Is this a concern? Please I'd like to hear from some of you and possibly find some comparisons and best values.
Thank you,

Susanna

First of all, you must be a REALLY good g/f in order to spend that much
for your b/f for his b-day. Now, one of the differences is the amount
of vram that's onboard the card. The 6800GT comes in two main
flavors...one that has 128mb of vram onboard, and one that comes with
256mb of vram onboard. He really doesn't need the 256mb version, as
none of today's games really take advantage of that much vram as of yet.
Yes, don't get the BFG as it does indeed have a bad heatsink and fan,
junk really. All of them support Directx9 (you can upgrade a card that
doesn't come with 9c quite easily). Personally if it were me, I'd go
with the asus card that newegg has. It's the best deal for the money
IMO, but if he insists on having one of the more expensive cards, PNY is
a good brand as well as EVGA. I also wouldn't go with a chaintech or
gainward either, as the performance on those cards tends to be less than
that of some of the others that are supposed to be the "same quality".