Author Topic: Looking for Opinions of eVGA (brand) vid card (Read 315 times)

Tumor · « **on:** March 27, 2002, 11:09:54 AM »

Almost talked myself into getting the eVGA Ti4600, however there's nary a review on the card out yet. As a matter of fact, I can only find one or two reviews on the company at all, for the Ti MX line. They appear to be ok, but I was hoping someone here might have a better idea of the company.

bloom25 · « **Reply #1 on:** March 27, 2002, 06:48:51 PM »

My honest opinion is that it doesn't really make much difference what brand you get. Most every video card manufacturer (except for Asus and Gainward) just copies nVidia's reference design when making a GeForce series card. For the most part they are virtually identical. The only noticible difference between a "cheap" brand is usually the fan and the speed of ram used.

Since you are probably going to use nVidia's reference drivers, driver support isn't really an issue either.

I've seen eVga cards before (though not a GF4 Ti), and they seem to be fine.

You might want to see if the eVga card you are looking at was mentioned in Tom's Hardware's http://www.tomshardware.com recent GF 4 review.

Tumor · « **Reply #2 on:** March 27, 2002, 07:14:19 PM »

Thanks bloom

... Nothing at Toms other than a little review he did a couple weeks ago. Crossing my finger's he'll have a review out tommorrow (I think they publish on Thursday).

I noticed on the eVGA website that thier drivers don't even list WinXP as supported, that caught my eye. Not that I'd be using those like you said but I kinda thought that was wierd.

I'm allot more torqued off right now because I've already cancelled 3 dang orders for 3 differen't cards. New post for that lol.

thanks bloom

UserName · « **Reply #3 on:** March 28, 2002, 11:47:34 AM »

Never heard of eVGA before myself, but like bloom said, there is very little difference between nVidia reference and retail cards.

If you're really nervous/skeptical however, make sure you order from a place that has a good return policy and support.

About the drivers, I think they just group the XP drivers with the Windows 2000 drivers, but didn't bother putting the W2K/XP thingmie there. I don't think there are seperate reference drivers for XP and W2K.

The eVGA Ti 4600 looks pretty slick, I wonder how useful that cooling system will be.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #4 on:** March 28, 2002, 12:30:20 PM »

About the only things I concern myself with in regards to NVidia cards, is as follows:

1) Is the video RAM the correct speed to allow the GPU full speed access? (Cheaper cards usually skimp here)
2) Does the GPU have a good heat sink and fan? (Another are where cheap cards skimp)
3) Does the RAM have good heat sinks? (Cheapos skimp here too)
4) Is the video signal driver high quality? This one is tough. Cheap cards use low end video signal drivers which cause low light conditions in the image and/or fuzziness. If the card has a SVGA out connector, you can pretty much bet the video signal driver is a good one, but not always.

Another area where cheapos skimp and is impossible to know until you have the card in your hands are the number of layers in the PCB. This effects signal/video quality, but not to the degree the actual video driver part does. I believe the 8 layers is a good sign, 6 is okay, and 4 is bad. You can count the number of layers by looking at the edge of the PCB with a magnifying glass (well, I need a magnifying glass).