9800 pro manufacturer which one?

[adammaxwell]

Turns out my old GF4ti4200 was stuffed (see post below)

Ive decided to replace it with a Radeon 9800 Pro.

The big decision is going to be between brands

In Australia I can get a
HIS ATI Radeon 9800Pro IceQ 128mb DDR AGP Video Card
for AU$490 / US$345

Or I can go for a cheeper brand
GeXcube ATi Radeon 9800PRO-C3-Xtreme 128MB Pro
for only AU$360 / US$255

Is the better brand really worth an extra AU$130 / US$90

 

[cryo]

I wouldn't buy GeCube, Gigacube and the like.... poor build quality, lots of people had problems with them
HIS is pretty good... the price difference comes from the cooling system used (IceQ), which is quite interesting.

If you don't feel like spending that extra money on the fancy cooling sollution of HIS, look for an ATi (BBA), Sapphire, Asus or Hercules board. Try to stay away from GeCube, Powercolor, Club3D.

"I cannot give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma"
- The Wizard of Oz, talking to the Scarecrow

 

[cryo]

lots of people complaining about crappy ram on GeCubes (just read today a couple of posts)
Also on some models, they (and powercolor) sometimes mess with the frequencies (generally underclocked)
So, if the difference between a good brand and a controversial one is about 10-20 bucks, I would gladly spend them. But that's just me...

"I cannot give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma"
- The Wizard of Oz, talking to the Scarecrow

 

[Crashman]

You loose! I haven't checked their 9800 series cards, but the GeCube 9600 Pro (which isn't even marked "light" or "EZ") runs 5, yes 5ns Hynix RAM. Newegg says it's 600MHz! Of course we know that can't be true, so I looked at the BIOS, it's 200MHz (DDR400) and being 5ns can't be pushed much higher.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Crashman]

I don't know, but they do have some 9600XT's with 4ns Hynix!

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>