You may have good experience with asus cards, but honestly, I'd drop both those ideas. Why buy any of these brands? Asus, MSI, Gainward, etc...While the fine partners over at EVGA/XFX/BFG offer lifetime warranties? EVGA and XFX are by far the best and most recommended nvidia partners, they offer lifetime warranties as well as special programs.

EVGA offers the step up, you have 3 months, if you want, you can trade in the card and get something better, this is great for nabbing something now and saving the funds to upgrade it to something better within the 3 month period. Or even buying something now and waiting for a new card to come out to step up too. Fantastic program.

XFX offers the double lifetime warranty. If you sell the card to anyone, that new owner gains the lifetime warranty as well. This makes it great for selling the card at a higher value and quickly, this is great for high end cards, where you can pretty much sell them for 50-100 under the current MSRP, and slap on an extra 100-200 ontop of your funds made to buy a new highend.

Personally, as well as others would recommend, drop the asus and gainward ideas and go for XFX/EVGA. Best route you can take, you won't regret it.

BFG is indeed good, but XFX and EVGA are FAR from below par. Plus, those special programs give them the better edge. But BFG is still a contender. But I'd never part with anything but XFX if I was to nab myself a new nvidia based card =P.

<3 XFX

That doesn't mean a thing. ASUS makes some of the best enthusiasts boards available, but they also release boards with terrible VIA chipsets (some which don't even support 8800GT / GTS cards. Lame.

EVGA, XFX, and BFG just do graphics cards w/ maybe a few motherboards on the side. Their focus is graphics though, so you know they're going to have the edge of everyone else when it comes to dealing graphics cards.