Price vs. Perf on midrange GFX

[Minerva]

Hi All

I had a stroke of "brilliant" luck last night...

Bought some Zalmann ramsinks for my Leadtek PX6600GT TDH Extreme 128MB. So off I rip the waterblock, yank the card out of the pc, clean up the ram chips with some 95% alcohol(sp?) stick the ramsinks on, clean the GPU as well, put some new paste on, refit the waterblock and stick the card back in the pc... Power up... NOTHING

So out I rip everything, clinb in with compressed air, blow all the connectors etc, check the card, making sure I didn't break anything. Replug - still nothing... In the end, I put in a PCI card into the pc, and the pc is working 100% So this morning I brought the card with me to work and tried it in another pc, seems the card is totally dead. I am trying to find out if it is still under guarantee, witch it should be, but I am looking at a replacement if it isn't. S now we get to the question...

Price is a bit of an issue, so I will have to look at a midrange card, ie: 7300, 7600 and whatever goes in that price/perf range on the ATi's - I must be quite honest and say that I have no idea what the comparative ATi's are to the nVidias...

What should I go for - nV/ATi and what brands are better between Gainward/Leadtek/Inno/Gigabyte/Asus/others?

Any Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

PS: I am in South Africa so an item on newegg os such site in the us is not going to help me at all.

 

[Minerva]

No replies yet? either everyone is sleeping, or no-one is interested

 

[choirbass]

this should be fairly helpful, as far as determining what might be best suited to your budget

its an article THW did on the best price/performance gaming gpus (as of december)... now, these price catagories are US based, but they should carry over somewhat to where you are...

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/12/12/the_best_gaming_graphics_cards_for_the_money/

yeah... most people are probably asleep about now, but no worries about responses, youll be guaranteed to at least get a few in most cases, usually over the coarse of a few hours, give or take

 

[Minerva]

Ahhhh, cool, that helps. I had a look at the gpu charts as well, and as there weren;t any prices there, it didnt make much sense to me.