Entry level replacement for 8400gs

[guinness1983]

I'm looking at the NVIDA 210 any opinions or input would be appreciated.

I do not game at all, browsing, youtube and streaming movies and sports on my Dell e521 running vista with 2 gigs of ram, athlon 64 x2....

I've been happy with my 8400gs up till it fried earlier today, the only problem i had was the fan which i had to keep replacing every 6 months or so because of noise and general fan failure. I guess quietness is important since my pc is around 2 ft from my seating position.

Also, which brand makes the best version and what stats do i check on the box. I remember the guy that sold me my 8400gs told me it had 512mb of ram but it only actually has half of that. How do i check these things?

 

[Peter.Cort]

msconfig will tell you. (run ==> msconfig [enter])

also for cards seeing as how you have an affinity for breaking it (probably just bad luck ) but something with a good warranty might suit you well, in which case I'd look at XFX because they have a double lifetime warranty on their cards,

Newegg.com - XFX GM210XYAF2 GeForce 210 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card

 

[guinness1983]

Thanks for the quick response.

Double lifetime? As long as it has at around 12 months i'm good with it. I've noticed there are a lot of brands that manufacture these things. I guess they're all the same quality then? Any brands in particular I should stay away from?

 

[Peter.Cort]

the double lifetime is if it changes ownership (like you sell it or give it to someone) there's another lifetime warranty on it no questions asked where as a lot of other companies will ***** and complain if you aren't the original buyer. and for a low end card where performance doesn't mean anything, and they all cost about the same why not get one that has a lifetime warranty rather than a 2 year just to be safe.

I wouldn't really say to stay away from any particular brand, only because its a lower end card. if you were buying a high end card there are a lot of brands that are more reliable, but since it's basically a display card only you don't really need to worry about the reliability as much.

but that being said, some of the more reliable brands of the gtx 210 are xfx and evga. Asus, MSI and gigabyte aren't bad choices either.

but like i said, with performance not mattering, price being the same and reliability being pretty similar across the board, why not go with the longer warranty card.