graphics card question..... can you help?
Im looking at high end graphic cards and see many the same card but made by different people who show widely different prices! Why is this? Eg on dinopc.com it says their nvidia geforce gtx280 is like £292 but on microdirect their asus gtx280 is £417!! Are they not the same card? Have asus done something to their card to make it better? Is the geforce one less quality? If this is the case where the GPU's differ widely in price beacuse of other factors can anyone tell me who is best to buy from?? Which manufacture makes the best gtx280 for example... thankyou inadvance..
hi dave
yes they are the same card however some sites either run superspecials or offers and also some of the bigger websites have more buying power so they have the capability to buy larger qauntitys of components and sell then at a better price
also allthough all cards that use a specific model/series name such as the geforce 7600gt may not have the same specifications
for example the p.o.v(point of view) brand of the 7600gt has a 560mhz core clock and a 800mhz memory clock were as the xfx version of the exactly same card has the same core clock but a 1400mhz memory clock
this is a significant difference and shows in the memory bandwidths,the pov version has a 12.8gb/sec memory bandwidth which is actually the same as the 7600gs,however the xfx version has a 22.4gb/sec bandwidth,nearly twice that of the pov version
and when your buying a component such as a graphic card these types of differences can mean a extra 20/30 fps(frames per second)
so may advice dave is do some research before buying a new graphic card,and pay close attention to the specifications for each brand
and you may think "how can these manufactuers get away with these large differences in speed"..well as long as the manufactuer use the correct chipset,so in the case of the 7600gt it will be the g73 chip from nvidia,then they are not breaking any laws
the memory clock speeds and capacitys can be different but the basic gpu(graphic processor unit) must not be altered
for all round value "zotac" have some excellent card and their "Zotac GTX 280 1GB PCI-E " from http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/PCI-E/nVIDIA+GTX+260%2F280+Series/Zotac+GTX+280+1GB+PCI-E+?productId=32116 is excellent value at just £249.95 exc. VAT
alternatively the Asus GeForce GTX 260 896MB PCI-E 2.0(http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/PCI-E/nVIDIA+GTX+260%2F280+Series/Asus+GeForce+GTX+260+896MB+PCI-E+2.0+Retail+?productId=32441) is also a amazingly fast card,and for just £178.85 exc. VAT makes excellent value
on a performance basis the gtx260 is equal to a geforce 9800gtx so this is a excellent choice for any gamers and when you consider that the average price of the gtx280 is around £400 you could also run 2 x gtx260,s in sli which would be interesting
any problems let me know
good luck dave !
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