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Its getting near the time for me to start looking at building a new rig. I keep a general eye on the market most of the time but still lost on a lot of things. One thing I've noticed is a brand of video cards, XFX, that seem to be quite a bit less than the competition. Does anyone know anything about these cards? Usually when I see something like that I get suspicious, either they're just no good or they are good and doing their part to help drive prices down..

This is a combo I'm looking at:

Abit AX8 Via Socket 939 ATX Motherboard
ABIT AX8 powered by VIA K8T890/VT8237 chipsets based on AMD Athlon 64/64FX Socket 939 CPU. The AX8 features SATA RAIDm Dual DDR400, PCI Express, IEEE1394 and Gigabit LAN including ABIT engineered µGuru for optimum overall system. This board is the performer if the year. Using the groundbreaking Hyper Transport Technology and gushing with extra capacity and peripherals support as well as first class onboard 5.1-channel audio, this board can be easily be your foundation for a superb system.

1 PCI-Express X16
3 PCI X1


XFX GeForce 6800 XT 256MB GDDR3 PCIe Video Card
The NVIDIA® GeForce 6800 GPUs set a new standard for PC performance and real-time 3D graphics. Delivering a revolutionary superscalar architecture, and an advanced on-chip video processor, the GeForce 6800 GPUs power the ultimate PC experience.


this isn't a major system probably from what some of you are running but it would be a huge upgrade for me, I can by these two bundled together for $200.00...I'd still have to by a processor so I'm not sure if its a great deal.

I was thinking about upgrading soon, but after talking to Sly and looking at the market I've decided to wait and see what happens...

Two reasons...

DDR2 will be available for AMD's

Socket 939 is the last of the bunch, I think it's all moving over to socket 940 with the AM2

Same here,

I also was planning on getting a new rig this summer, but as the Vista release is short by and also fsX is coming up I want to at least be able to run that, so I'll sit it out till something like after X-mas (prices may also drop then as the big wave is over )


fled

When comparing vid cards, be aware that most of the brand partners use the original technology on the cards but clock them to their own spec's for market release. Three main differences you need to consider;

Core speed
Mem speed
Pipelines.

And higher is not always better;
XFX's have numerous models of various cards. Some are pretty standard, some are o/c'd and some are heavily pre-clocked. On BYO, the most heavily clocked of these have been getting reports of instability and failure after short periods of time.

Unfortunately, recommending a brand as an alternative might not be wise as most tend to report back as to whether it's an ATi or an nVidia. The XFX's have a strong brand name and packing individuality and tend to be reported as such.

well I'm not sure if I'll wait much longer..there's always new tech coming out and I can never afford the latest & greatest...I'm a "middle of the road" builder, and spending about $400.00 would get me a huge upgrade to what I have and get me what I need to upgrade in the future..

Hi Hangy

XFX 6800 ultra in my rig been doin the business for 18 months now, BTW this replaced a Leadtech 6800 that lasted just 2 weeks

Bin rock steady with mild O' Clock

S~ Sly