Graphics cards that you brought and left you with dissapointment

A sparkle card I bought that just underperformed (pre Nvidia 6000 series). Haven't bought a generic card since, only go with the known names.
 
I had a Sparkle GTX8800+, came with this fancy cooler. One of the best cards I had in a while. The guy that bought it from me is still using it :)
 
Sparkle make some of the fastest cards around. Yeah they're not as big as some other brands in SA, but they can perform brilliantly and usually last as well; normally fast cards die young.
 
It didn't help that the sparkle was one of these cards that used computer memory as well as the direct memory.

I have a Leadtek px8800gt zl which has been the best card I ever bought. Maybe sparkle have improved since my bad experience.
 
I had the MX440, but it crashed with everything. I thought it was just Chaintech rubbish... but everyone seems to complain about ther MX440.
 
GeForce 6200 TC

ATI died and had to get one in a hurry. Even having been made years later I could see the jitter right away.
 
None, my card history is as follows

Geforce 3 Ti 200
ATi Radeon 9600 LE
Geforce 7600GS
Geforce 8800GT
Radeon HD 5770

None of those were disappointments for what I paid for them. :)
 
ATi Radeon 9600. Good card for what it was worth, but kept having graphics driver issues. Had to re-install drivers (sometimes the same drivers) every month or so.. very annoying.
 
Bought a 6870HD in december. Reviews stated it was the best bang for buck card on the market, in most tests on par with a GTX570, in some tests surpassing the GTX570 by quite a bit. And to boot, I bought the asus overclocked edition. But I had endless hassles with it, frame drops, driver issues, bluescreens etc. Had the card swapped and the issues stopped, but it was still severly lacking in the performance department, opposed to what all the reviews stated.

Swapped to a GTX570 DirectCU II and it absolutely hammered the 6870 in every single game and test I put it through. As an example with highest FPS I got with the 6870 in Blackops was just shy of 270, with an average on any given map of about 80-120. GTX570, Highest FPS hit close to the 500FPS range, with average FPS between 180 and 250. And the GTX570 was a mere R200 more than what I paid for the 6870
 
Maplassie said:
Bought a 6870HD in december. Reviews stated it was the best bang for buck card on the market, in most tests on par with a GTX570, in some tests surpassing the GTX570 by quite a bit. And to boot, I bought the asus overclocked edition. But I had endless hassles with it, frame drops, driver issues, bluescreens etc. Had the card swapped and the issues stopped, but it was still severly lacking in the performance department, opposed to what all the reviews stated.

Swapped to a GTX570 DirectCU II and it absolutely hammered the 6870 in every single game and test I put it through. As an example with highest FPS I got with the 6870 in Blackops was just shy of 270, with an average on any given map of about 80-120. GTX570, Highest FPS hit close to the 500FPS range, with average FPS between 180 and 250. And the GTX570 was a mere R200 more than what I paid for the 6870
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Im quite surprised Map

I brought this card two months ago and have been so impressed, all the issues you had with that card never found their way to me.

Kinda weird, LOL i still think it is indeed the best bang for your buck card, i payed just over 2k for mine and am more than satisfied, plays BC2 like a dream avg fps is 75+ on everything high in 1080p

Though i brought MSI and i would imagine ASUS has even better build quality....
 
ogbuzz said:
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Im quite surprised Map

I brought this card two months ago and have been so impressed, all the issues you had with that card never found their way to me.

Kinda weird, LOL i still think it is indeed the best bang for your buck card, i payed just over 2k for mine and am more than satisfied, plays BC2 like a dream avg fps is 75+ on everything high in 1080p

Though i brought MSI and i would imagine ASUS has even better build quality....
Click to expand...

See the thing is when I bought it, IT was R2999, was the day they were launched in SA. Had the first one swapped, and even tested the second one in another machine. Look they are by no means slow, not in the slightest, but nowhere near what was posted on review sites etc. And like I said moving to a GTX570 which cost me like R200 or R300 more, got me close to double performance than the 6870 did in most of my games.
 
I agree at the time where the 6870 was that price, seems as if the GTX570 is the better choice

but now with the 6870 at a lower price, what would be the better choice.....

Yep the 6870 is R2.5 K roughly, the GTX570 is on avg 1K more

considering i payed R2.1 K for the card, it was a steal....
 
Going back a bit, I bought the Nvidia 4200Ti graphics card. (Cost me an "arm and a leg") A few months thereafter (approx 3 mnths) the 4800Ti was release improving on the 4200Ti with better specs. Needless to say that I felt cheated and ripped off. (maybe it was my bad timing)
 
ogbuzz said:
I agree at the time where the 6870 was that price, seems as if the GTX570 is the better choice

but now with the 6870 at a lower price, what would be the better choice.....

Yep the 6870 is R2.5 K roughly, the GTX570 is on avg 1K more

considering i payed R2.1 K for the card, it was a steal....
Click to expand...

Where do you buy, so that I can make a note of which places to avoid...
 
SharkBait said:
Where do you buy, so that I can make a note of which places to avoid...
Click to expand...

average prince is close to the amount for zaps, prophecy etc

however thats not a concern to me since i buy directly from distro's

Sorry to say but you'll have to avoid many dealers int his case, LOL
 
My evolution of cards is as follows:

S3 Trio (Got with the household pentium 2 back in 2003)
Upgraded to Savage 3 which was the biggest dissappointment in my life (played NFS underground 5 FPS and finished it btw)
Geforce 2 (Played NFS Underground Maxed the freak out, obviously no blur effects etc.)
FX5200 (Played NFS Underground worse than GF2) :(
ATI 9200SE (Gave the GF to my sis)
ATI 9600XT (All-In-Wonder greatness!)
ATI HIS 9800 Pro (Swopped with my friend, was awesome up until I installed Quake 4 and Oblivion...)
ATI 9550 (Thank you ESKOM for blowing my 9800 with your power cuts)
ATI X1300 (Pathetic piece of PCB and resistors, Warcraft 3 lagged!)
Nvidia 8500GT (NFS Prostreet on XP sweet performance, on Vista not so sweet)
ATI 3850 (Awesome card, played Bioshock on 1080p resolution lag phree)
ATI 4850 (I think this card speaks for itself)
Nvidia 460GTX (Plays Crysis 2 smooth on 720p, DX11 and high texture packs installed...need more Ram in the system though)

Only card that REALLY dissappointed me was the Savage apart from that I willingly knew what I was going in to.
 
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