video card (australia)

[bcaton]

I'm in australia and my video card has perished :P

 

I find a lot of the reviews are wrong because they are written overseas and the prices here seem pretty bizarre. A 'cheap' card can be so overpriced that it's better to fly overseas and buy it, and some people do just that (of course it helps if you have hong kong citizenship).

 

I've been trying to get ahold of the ATI 4770 but it seems to be sold out everywhere, or the price being sold in the shop is far higher than the price the shops advertise it for (which is probably illegal but the board in charge of trade practises can't handle things like that, i've tried reporting abuses to no effect, probably run by the computer illiterate crowd).

 

So does anyone know a decent card available now in australia? Preferably one that doesn't overheat, with a warranty over 2 years so i can trust it won't burn out like the last one. I have a decent psu but my motherboard doesn't have xfire, so i'd have to buy a new m'board if i go that route :P

 

I don't care if it's nvidia or ATI, although i heard ATI wasn't good for linux, and linux is on my list of things i really should use! :)

 

Thanks!!

[TheTerminator2004]

I dont know about Australia, but if you plan to use Linux I can say without doubt that you must NOT get an ATi card. Or in fact, any smaller manfacturer who doesnt have the resources to develop proper drivers for Linux either - though ATi aren't exactly small, so you'd think they'd have corrected that by now... The ATi drivers for Linux are a buggy, half-finished, broken mess, and are good for next to nothing, though they are improving. I had so much trouble just getting any kind of 3D rendering to work on my Ubuntu setup, in the end I just gave up and went out and bought an nvidia card - worked practically out of the box, though the drivers arent open source, so they weren't installed by default. But they usually come on the disk anyway.

 

An Nvidia card would probably be your best value for money anyway, although I don't know which one would be best. maybe one of the 8800 series cards.