[citation][nom]gnesterenko[/nom]Yep - I'm not an enthusaist by any means and I couldnt' care less about manufacturer warranty. First off, I buy from newegg so they take care of things when things go wrong. Second, after purchasing one of the first 1GB 4870s available, I immediately voided the warranty by putting an after-market cooler on it. Second, the PhysX point braught up by KyleSTL. If you are buying these for folks that aren't going to be doing hardcore gaming, then they ahve absolutelty no use for PhysX anyway. Second, if you DO care about PhysX, then you should be going for a higher end card anyway. Third, physX support is horrible in games (I think mirrors edge is the most advanced one yet) for NOW, by the time its actually worth having, you'll be upgrading to a new card. And finally, AMD has its own physics engine - just don't exactly remember what its called now - there was an article about it just last week... But again, a moot point because no games actually make good use of it."The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."[/citation]
First: If your going to cite someone, cite the right person.
Second: The comment about PhsyX was about having a secondary use for old cards. The idea here wasn't to put and old card that can run PhysX and an old card that can run graphics into a family member's computer, but to have a choice as to what to do with an older, upper end card.
Third: ATI recently showcased their cards running Havoc. Havoc is an Intel property (NOT ATI'S). Also, only special "showcase" programs use Havoc on the GPU; there are NO games that use GPU power for Havoc. I know you mentioned that no games make use of it, but I wanted to emphasize the fact that the only physics program that runs on a GPU is PhysX.