I'm about to buy a new graphics card and wondered if someone could give me some advice preferably with a graphics card manufacturer who has good customer service if any problems ever did arise with the card (hopefully never) lol. I know of several online retailers those being the below, http://www.cclonline.com http://www.scan.co.uk http://www.dabs.com http://www.ebuyer.com http://www.novatech.co.uk http://www.overclockers.co.uk If anyone knows of any others please let me know and could someone please recommend a decent NVIDIA GTX 260 (216 Core) Max budget is £170. Thank you.
Just get the cheapest one you can find from a reputable site (out of those you listed that would be Scan, ebuyer and novatech). You should easily be able to find a 216 SP GTX 260 for under £150 on any of those sites.
Thanks smc8788, I'll have a look later on and see what's on those three sites, Scan, ebuyer and novatech, I've been looking at the Zotac GTX 260's on ebuyer because the 8800 GT I had of their's was rock solid and they have a 5 year warranty! but just wondered if anyone could recommend anything else
They're all the same to be honest, most just use the reference design (some have different coolers, though). Some have longer warranties than others which may be worth paying a bit more for, but remember that in all likelihood won't be keeping the card for 5 years, more like 1 or 2 (do you still use a card that you bought 5 years ago?), hence they are just a bit of a gimmick really. Oh, and make sure you don't get drawn into paying loads more for a pre-overclocked model.
Ok thanks again. Just wondering though with the pre-overclocked models I'm assuming they add on a premium of say an extra £40 and the real performance is only like 5 FPS difference which doesn''t really justify an extra £40 for a mere 5 FPS increase does it?
Well, no, and there's also the fact that you can easily get that 5 FPS out of a stock card by overclocking it a bit yourself using Rivatuner.
Thanks for the info smc8788, what I can now tell you is I went for this http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BFG-MC260 it's the BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC MAXCORE and it cost £166.75 (£173) with next day delivery. I know it cost more than standard GTX 260's and I wasn't going to go with an overclocked card but from what I heard about BFG cards from friends and the fact that I heard BFG have excellent warranties I thought it would be worth paying the extra premium for that alone. What do you think
look at scan for the 260(216) XFX brand its £148 with fry cry 2 and is bargintastic XFX carrys a 2 year warranty too
I had to return an 8800 GTX to Overclockers, their service although it took about a month from me sending it was fine. Got a replacement card, no issues..
