Well for the second time I'm having a great time with my matrox...

I sent my 7900Gs to msi when it didn't work anymore, and -after two month- they sent it back and at first it was working and relativly stable (one to two bluescreens a week). But now it's just as before, same symptoms, Pc crashing for random, with grafic errors, sometimes I have to wait an hour, before it's able to start correctly after such crashes...

I have no sense for waiting another two months so I'll take my "chance" and upgrade my grafics.

I have 130€ max. 150€.

I have focused on two grafic chips:

1: Geforce 9800GTX+

2: Radeon HD4850

The question is:
Which of this one do you recommend and which publisher?
There are good prices on Zotac and Gigabyte (and MSI but I don't think that I'll buy Msi in the next time) for the 9800GTX+
and HIS or Sapphire for the HD4850.

Another point is: Does it make sense to buy these cards with 1024mb instead of 512? (the price is all in all comparable at least for the radeon)

Who has got one of these cards and can give me some advice (I'm expecially interested in temperature as my cooling system isn't best)?

Or does anyone have a better hint for a chipset?

Not sure which one is actually better but I had a Sapphire card in the past, and I can say that I never had any problems, crashes or whatsoever with it.

I'd prefere the radeon one, too but it's tested as worse conserning temperature compared to the nvidia one (computerbase.de - model by msi)

I just don't know whether there are much differences to other publishers conserning the temperature.

lately i have been a nvidia fan, i dont have a huge bias, although I do know that 9800GTX's do rock.

The HD4850 is faster than the 9800GTX though.

Cheers

i wouldnt know, i do think the next card i get is going to be a radeon just for the sake of keeping a good balance

It's not a huge difference if I recall correctly, but my next card will be the Radeon HD4870X2. It's not the fastest card anymore, but still gives lots of bang for buck.

Ok I think I found a solution:

Asus EAH4850 TOP/HTDI/512M, Radeon HD 4850

It's a slightly overclocked version of the reference model that's on the same level as the 9800GTX+ . But the greatest advantage is that it comes with another cooling system that is tested much cooler than the reference model (computerbase.de).

As it isn't really more expensive than comparable models I think I'll going to take this one.

good choice

nice redphoenix