EVGA 896-P3-1265-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

Pros: Great price to performance ratio for this nVidia product. EVGA quality and warranty, plus step-up program potential. Playing STALKER:Clear Sky currently and this card now makes the game very enjoyable in being able to turn on all the goodies (Sun Rays, yay, Sun Rays!) ;).

Cons: Had to use tin snips to cut a portion of my Antec Solo drive bay away to be able to fit the card in the case. I knew it was NOT going to fit before purchasing the card, so I was prepared with what needed to be done.

Overall Review: (1) I struggled a bit between going with the 192 vs 216 core versions. With prices down to the very low 200s on the 192 going up about 70 to get the 216 did make for some thought. In the end, the increase in benchmarks at given resolutions on games that I am playing made my mind up for me. (2) Yes, there are ATI alternatives out there, however, each time I've wandered over to the ATI camp to 'save' a bit of money, I've been burned by eithe driver issues, stability issues, or heat issues (or a combination of those). With nVidia things just work. Grab the refrence drivers, install and go. They just work.

Pros: These cards are generally very good. I've seen a few of them at work (I fix computers for a living) and they all seem to do really well for performance, especially in the SLI rigs I've seen. The 216 core version is almost as good as a GTX 280. They really should've called this a GTX 270 since it's right between the specs of the 192 core GTX 260 and the GTX 280. This is the only series of card I've seen that plays GTA4 well enough for my tastes. Great upgrade from an 8800GT. Runs cool and it's wicked fast.

Cons: I got a bad card, which makes an awful screeching noise in 3D mode and crashes my system. Same thing happened to a friend of mine with his first one. Seems like 2nd time's a charm for getting one of these that works.

Overall Review: This is much more bang for the buck than the GTX 280. There are also a variety of factory overclocked versions of this card available for a few dollars more.