So, I am reading and reading about the latest chipsets for grafics-cards ( Nvidea and ATi). But, my million dollar question of the day is: Does the brand of the card make a difference on the performance of the card? I am talking Asus, Aopen, Leadtek, Creative Labs, MSI, ... The chip is just the engine on the "car" right, so a BMW-engine in a Lada doesn't make a great car.

So  what are the things to look out for and where could i find some info on the different brands? Seems benchmark-tests are performed on chips rather than on cards...

Thanks!

PS: I am refering to different cards with the same chipset. ex. 6600 GT

ATI and Nvidia makes the chipset. This have names like 6800 ultra or x800 xt.

Then card manufacturors like asus and MSI put the chipset on a card and ship. Generally, brands don't matter in terms of performence.

However, different companies package the card differently. For example some companies package games with their cards. Others package overclocking software. Look around for good deals.

Though it doesn't happen often, sometimes there is a different level of craftsmenship between manufacturors (i.e. how well they made the card). I haven't had any problems with any cards from any company except PNY.

I reccommend you to aviod PNY cards from bad experiences with them.

Some manufactures improve the look of the card with colored PCBs they design their own coolers and offer bundle software and games, others that sell their cards cheaper may use low quality memory modules and other components, I recommend you keep with the manufactures listed on the GPU manufacturer web site. Since I moved to Nvidia cards(used to have voodoos) I’m buying them from MSI and I’m very pleased with what they have to offer I bought a GeForce 4 TI4200 and a GeForce fx5900 both came with great bundle software and cooling solutions the 5900 has a big cooper cooler wile most of the others have aluminum coolers and they have this cool feature called AI overclock that will automatically overclock the card when it is under high load if you wish and you can also overclock it manually in the driver without requiring additional tools. And my next card that I bought is from MSI too but it is coming only by the end of January

MSI I can recommend, although I have never had an ASUS video card I'm sure they must be very good as I’ve had lots of motherboard made by them that were excellent.

If you have a choice go w/ 256mb.  I doubt it makes a huge difference in many games yet (Doom 3 maybe?).  As for the manufacturer, some are better than others.  The chipset is made by ATI, Nvidia, etc. , but the other companies BFG, Asus, Chaintech, Hercules, etc. decide on the heatsink, clock speed, memory, and other perks.  Also the bundle, like free games, is up to the company.