ASUS EN8400GS SILENT/HTP/512M GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

Pros: Very nice card had it for at least 3 years and running like new. To bad it's deactivated, o well. If you have the chance ever again, buy it!

Cons: Because of the "Noiseless cooling" overclocking on this card is not a posliblilty. Bummer :(

Pros: One of the few PCI Express cards you can get that doesn't require a major system overhaul.

Cons: Lacks a fan, so it might get hot in a cramped space if no airflow is provided.

Other Thoughts: Bought and installed this into a family member's machine. He plays the game Warhammer. Graphic settings on high brought this card to its knees...fast(he had to try it). Also it brought the card temp up pretty high and caused artifacts on the screen. Games should be run at the recommended settings with this card since it is fanless(a.k.a. Silent).

I've got a 9800 card myself. You can pickup a power supply for around the price of this card, then opt for a better video card if you're going to do any sort of gaming. If you need something to watch movies or do non-gaming stuff, then this card might be overkill.

Since it's the 8400 card, it's a series 8 (2 generations old at this time) and a performance factor of 4 (Not too fast).

An 8800 card is a higher performance gaming card from the same series.

Every year they come out with fancy new cards, the cards from the previous year come down in price.

Pros: Installed on an older Dell desktop and it was recognized immediately. Graphics improvement was noticable. Since there's no fan, it is exceptionally quiet.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I would buy it again if the need arose

Pros: Cheap, quiet and includes a free coaster disguised as a driver cd. Once the correct (XP) driver and nothing else is installed it worked well for me, but I'm not a gamer. Works in Ubuntu 9.04 with the OS suggesting and installing the latest(?) driver. I'm dual booting. If you don't make the mistakes that I did, it's a good bargain.

Cons: Installing the included software damaged my XP installation.
Even though I created a restore point beforehand, I could not get rid of the problems it created. Even if it had worked, it was not only useless, but downright annoying. Shut down time increased fourfold (I fixed that in the registry), some apps had problems loading and displaying. Clean install was the easiest solution.

Other Thoughts: Asus finally organized their drivers so choosing the correct one is no longer ambiguous (for xp anyway). Installing the one available on their website works well and caused no problems ( I'm not using the latest but the previous one).
By the time you get your rebate, this card might be discontinued! Three months so far. Should be within two weeks they say. Maybe I should have taken the nine dollar expedited rebate!

Pros: Card works very well and installs with ease. Price is truly amazing. Fanless design seems to work well. Very much worth the money.

Cons: Product was shipped with CD-ROM based video drivers which were terribly out of date, and caused my PC to default to 800 x 600 pixel mode at 4 bit color. This problem proved somewhat difficult to remedy, and getting the updated driver through the ASUS website cost extra.

Other Thoughts: Not an easy plug-and-play replacement, but worth the investment if you can get past the driver issue.

Pros: $26 after MIR, silent, I don't game, so this is probably overkill, and it works fine for media playback.

Cons: Seems to run pretty warm. Heatsink could stand to have alot more surface area

Other Thoughts: The GPU is 50 C right now, with little airflow over it. I can get it to 43 by running my case fans on high, but I don't want to. I wish the heatsink had thinner fins and more of them, like any decent CPU heatsink would have, to make use of my meager ventilation.

Pros: Can run 1080p video content no sweat. good cheap directx 10 card and can run some games. (read other thoughts for more.)

Cons: Gaming

Other Thoughts: This card is not for gaming maybe mind sweeper or something like that but MMORPG's are a no no on this.

I did test some games though here is what i got on a dual core 2.0ghz 2gb ram machine.

Vanguard SOH- 20-25fps on low 1204x768 and 1280x1024
Everquest- 90+fps on all max 1280x1024
age of conan- 15-30fps very low 1024x768
everquest II-50-60fps balanced 1280x1024
Warhammer online-25-40fps low 1280x1024
Batman arkham asylum-10-19 fps 1280x1024
Batman arkham asylum-30-40fps 640x480

Pros: I recently bought a BIOSTAR TFORCE TA790GX, but configuring xorg.conf to support dual monitors with the AMD driver was impossible. It was easier to drop this board into the system, and configure xorg.conf using the 'twinview' optons supported by the nvidia driver. Here is an xorg.conf file that supports dual 24" lcd monitors using this card:

Section "ServerFlags"
AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
EndSection
Section "Module"
Disable "dri"
Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension
Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
Load "extmod"
Load "glx" # 3D layer
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbOptions" "compose:rwin"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

Cons: # xorg.conf continued

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "Plug'n Play"
ModelName "AL2423W"
HorizSync 31-81
VertRefresh 56-75
# Monitor preferred modeline (60.0 Hz vsync, 74.0 kHz hsync, ratio 16/10, 94 dpi)
ModeLine "1920x1200" 154 1920 1968 2000 2080 1200 1203 1209 1235 +hsync +vsync
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor2"
VendorName "Plug'n Play"
ModelName "Soyo"
HorizSync 31-81
VertRefresh 56-75
# Monitor preferred modeline (60.0 Hz vsync, 74.0 kHz hsync, ratio 16/10, 94 dpi)
ModeLine "1920x1200" 154 1920 1968 2000 2080 1200 1203 1209 1235 +hsync +vsync
EndSection

Other Thoughts: # xorg.conf continued

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName "nVidia"
BoardName "GeForce 8400"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "DPMS"
Option "DynamicTwinView" "true"
Option "TwinView" "true"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "LeftOf"
Option "metaModes" "monitor1: 1920x1200, monitor2: 1920x1200"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "monitor, montior2"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
EndSection


Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen2"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor2"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
Screen "screen1" 0 0
Screen "screen2" LeftOf "screen1"
EndSection

Pros: Made World of Warcraft run faster.Went form 25 frames per second to 60 fps.

Cons: Drivers didn't want to install right in vista .Had to turn off fire wall ,spybot and AVG that seemed to help the setup .

Pros: Cheap, quiet

Cons: Failed within two weeks

Other Thoughts: I owned my first card for less than two weeks and than it went out on me. Whenever I would load any application that used 3D graphics or video, the computer would completely crash. I had to do an RMA replacement to get a new one. So far the second one has been working much better, but I was still disappointed.