Which Nvidia distributors make the highest quality GeForce 7 cards?

[x-Max]

Quality is the word here. Not performance.

So far BFG, eVGA, Leadtek, and XFX seem to be the top 4 distributors with respect to performance, customer service, warranty, and other such solutions. But strickly through the quality of the hardware, like the quality of the filters, capacitors, memory, and fans, which of the Nvidia distributors make the best GeForce 7 cards, and specifically the 7800/7900 GTX models?

Thanks.

[ShuckyD]

i would still think that BFG, Leadtek etc.. have the "best" capacitors, memory, fans etc..

[buckaro]

I think you'l find its all a matter of opinion on that, different peoples will have had different experiances with those manufacturers, although i'd expect most have been plesent. Its hard to say which is highest quality, but a good guide for it IMO is the warranty length, because if its going to keep breaking they won't want a long warranty .

As for the Fan, you can get a better fan after your purchase and then put that on instead, if your OC'ing you may want too. If you wanted it to be silent im not sure about 7800's but the older cards can be purchased with silent cooling.

[x-Max]

It's an interesting theory that companies with a low duration warranty will probably have lower quality cards, while companies with something like a lifetime warranty will probably have higher quality cards since they dont excpect them to break.

But i'm thinking that it may be impossible to find out which companies have the highest quality hardware on thier products since the same company may implement high quality components on one product but not on another.

Does anybody know what the market share is for Nvidia distributors, US and or International. I know that BFG holds the largest market share in the US, but who holds second and third. And what about international market share?

Im asking this because usually companies that have higher market shares will probably have higher revenues and that means that they may be able to afford higher quality hardware on their products. Of course i could be totally wrong about this theory.

[Dethrattle]

Well i have a PNY verto and it is about 100X better than my old BFG ... the bfg was loud and it shut off all the time WITHOUT OVERCLOCK and with a more than powerful psu
I think it may just be luck with the card oh yeah the PNY was $30 cheaper

[VHockey86]

I've used 2 Asus cards and 2 PNY nvidia cards to date, been happy with all of them.

[johnnyis42]

Originally Posted by Dethrattle

Well i have a PNY verto and it is about 100X better than my old BFG ... the bfg was loud and it shut off all the time WITHOUT OVERCLOCK and with a more than powerful psu
I think it may just be luck with the card oh yeah the PNY was $30 cheaper

were they identical cards?


i would say BFG holds the reputation for quality, but in my experience i haven't had any of my geforce cards go bad on me ever. i've had 2 MSI, 1 Aopen, 2 BFG, and 1 creative labs, and never had one malfunction even in machines that were running 24/7.

only experience i have had with a geforce card go bad was a few years ago, a friend's Abit card he had to RMA.

as for quality of parts.... that's tough to really say because alot of the nvidia reference calls out for fairly tight specifications. deveating from that spec can only be done if your're tightenting it and not slacking it off. so folks like leadtech, xfx and bfg who deviate more from the spec than other distributors are most likey using more high end parts in order to maintain standards to the reference design at minimum.

[zepper]

I was going to say that Asus usually does a good job with the nVidia chipsets, but VHockey beat me to it...

.bh.

[Dethrattle]

yeah it was a 6600 just like the pny and was no good i think it may have been left the truck to long or was mishandled by the mail guys. either way it was better than my old ATI card no offense.

[Zoomy]

Well, out of those 4 I've only had first-hand experience with eVGA. My 7800Gt is made by them and it's a pretty good card.

Most card companies these days tend to be very good in terms of quality. If they aren't they soon go out of business.