Advice on Video Card purchase

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Coxis

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A few months back, I posted about a broken heatsink fan from my video card, an Asus PCI-E Nvidia GeForce 8600GT. I've come across to what it looks like a bargain... An Nvidia GeForce 9400GT, 512MB DDR2. There are a few things that worry me, though:

This is a link to the card

  • This new card only has one DVI port (the other is VGA)
  • From what I gather (and this is not from research, but from "word of mouth") Asus is a quality manufacturer, whereas I haven't heard of ECS Elite Group.
  • From what I can see on the pic, the card doesn't seem to have a heatsink (I don't even know if this is a bad thing).

On the context of the country I live in (Mexico) the price of this card is really a bargain (About $60). I am, however, worried that things will backfire just because I tried to save some bucks (I'm not really that knowledgeable when it comes to video cards... Too many companies manufacturing the same cards).

Help appreciated, as always. Thanks!

EDIT: This is a picture of my current video card. I hope you can see where I'm coming from, because this new card I'm looking to buy looks substantially different (Particularly because of the lack of a heatsink). I guess where I'm getting at is this; doesn't better hardware need to have better heat-dissipating mechanisms? This new card seems to have a very standard and smaller fan and no heatsink.
 
Ive checked the images for the ECS 9400GT and am sure the HS & fan although small will be adequate on this spec of card.

However it is unlikely to perform as well or better than your ASUS.

A quick search shows you can pick up a VGA cooler for $10 or less.

Just do a quick search for vga cooler on ebay or google...

If your happy with the ASUS this is your best option :)
 
Thanks, menacer. Unfortunately, finding hardware as easily (and as cheap) here is really next to impossible. The only VGA cooler I can find here costs almost as expensive as the card I'm looking to buy. Believe me, I tried to fix my card for weeks... Tried fixing it at home and ordering the only fans that I could find that fit and that didn't work, so I gave up (The fans I ordered were smaller, 40mm vs. 55mm in the card originally).

What you say about it not performing as well or better as my current card is interesting, though. Why is this? Isn't the 9400GT supposed to perform better? At least that's how they market it... The 9k series will out perform the 8k series, and so on.
 
Unfortunately, Newegg does not ship to Mexico.

No, the 9k series does not out perform ALL of the 8k series. After all, the 9k series has lower end cards which you shouldn't expect to beat the top 8k series cards. For your perception to work, the bottom 9k series card would have to be better than the top 8k card and that's just not the case.
 
Better yet, Newegg-everything you want there and always at fair prices.

Newegg only ships to addresses within the United States.

EDIT: Sorry I didn't see your response there, mailpup. Oh well, in that case I'm glad I stopped by here before buying that card. It's probably a few more months for me without a video card, sigh. I'm telling you, this economy meltdown is bringing me to the ground.
 
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