Quote: Originally Posted by
sygnus21 
I'll reiterate what I said earlier, then leave this debate as is. In my nine years of using ATI cards, I've only had one instance of a video card going bad due to heating issues. I think that's pretty good, especially since I kept an X800Pro running for better than 3 years. ATI cards I’ve owned include a 8500LE, 8500, 9700Pro, AIW 9800Pro, X1300Pro, X800, X1650Pro 3870, 4850, 4890 Out of all those cards only the 3870 crapped out on me. That's pretty good in my book and I'm just calling it the way I see it as well 
I've never owned any Nvidia products so I can't speak of their quality.
Oh, and Nvidia isn't exactly blowing ATI away in the cooling department either -
ATI Radeon HD 4890 vs. Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 - TechSpot Peace i have a ''powercolor X800GTO'', what a great card....
, i can happily play COD4 all day long on it at med setting with very respectable framerates.....
& these 55nm GT200 cards are not as good as the 65nm counterparts, even though the architecture is more efficient, they shrunk the coolers, removed the RAM heat sink from the rear of the card (back plate), & i believe the 65nm cards were 10 or 12 phase PCB's as apposed to the 8 phase PCB on the 55nm... (this is not gospel, but i do know the PCB differs so please check this for yourselves)
but i could pick holes in anything given enough time......lol
i must say though XFX's move to ATI has really started to make them far more appealing, if for nothing else but the customer support....they are SUPERB!!
SK