BFG Tech is officially toast

[Stallion]

Sadly, that lot includes me, since my GTX 285 came from them. HardwareCanucks now has a copy of an RMA refusal letter sent out to a customer, so if you've got a defective graphics card or PSU from BFG, don't bother sending it in.

Those looking to pick up remaining stock from electronics stores are safe going with stuff from NCIX, so long as you don't mind a one-year warranty. I wonder if I can get a remainder of a one-year warranty on this card? Guess I oughta email them. :

Suffice to say, after all the driver crap in the last year from Nvidia, as well as them effectively shutting out BFG from the 400-series cards, my next graphics card will be something from ATI. nUts to nVidia!

 

[Thagarr]

I used Nvidia cards for several years myself, when I built my last new rig, I decided to give ATI a shot. Mainly because AMD took over ATI, and the motherboard I am using was designed to work better with a couple of crossfired ATI cards. My video card is a Sapphire 3850, a couple of years old now, but still works great! It gets a little warm, but I never had any overheating issues with it like I did some of the Nvidia cards I had. It's played everything I have ever thrown at it flawlessly, so I never bothered to get me another and run them crossfired. I'm sure if I tried to play some of the top end FPS's like Crysis or some of the newer ones it would probably be pretty dated. But overall, I am happy as hell with the card.

I've been thinking on getting a new DirectX 11 card, but so far, I really haven't found a need to get one. ATI had DirectX 11 cards out almost 6 months before Nvidia released their first DirectX 11 card, they even had mobile chipsets supporting DirectX 11. That's a pretty sad statement on Nvidia in my opinion. I highly recommend ATI mate!

 

[Stallion]

You're not missing anything in not playing Crysis - I can max it out, but I don't really think it looks that great. Last time I checked, tropical jungle foliage doesn't normally look like somebody's lathered it with baby oil. : Gameplay is quite linear, too - the enemies are mostly bunched together, and they do an all-out charge if you're close enough. Heck, they don't even really look like Koreans (I used to live beside a bunch of 'em, so I should know) - they look more like constipated white guys who've spent a little too much time in the sun.

I'd have gone with an ATI card, but was a little worried about having several of the big parts of the computer all made by the same company. I'm wishing now I'd ignored that. Something tells me Nvidia's been headed down the tubes for a while now, but I missed the signs.

 

[Thagarr]

I suppose that depends on what jungle you are supposed to be in! :

BFG made decent cards, it really is a shame to see them go under. The card you got is a good one mate, it should last you for a while, at least till you see something shiny that requires DX 11. DX 11 does look like it has some great features, but I haven't seen any game yet that makes me really want to play it.

I'm sure Nvidia will bounce back at some point, they have been around way to long to let a few setbacks and stupid moves knock them completely out of the game. AMD did a great job with this last set of cards, however I am a bit concerned with what they have planned next. Basically, they plan on combining both the processor core and the GPU core on the same die, it will be called AMD Fusion. While this would solve some problems, and streamline a few things, I am just not convinced that this is a good idea. I will have to be very convinced before I would ever consider buying one of these proprietary systems.

AMD Fusion is a new approach to processor design and software development, delivering powerful CPU and GPU capabilities for HD, 3D and data-intensive workloads in a single-die processor called an APU. APUs combine high-performance serial and parallel processing cores with other special-purpose hardware accelerators, enabling breakthroughs in visual computing, security, performance-per-watt and device form factor. Software developers, utilizing AMD drivers, libraries and either the ATI Stream SDK2 or the Microsoft DirectCompute API, can enhance the user experience and speed application performance by developing applications that fully utilize the unique compute power of the AMD Fusionâ„¢ Family of APUs and AMD discrete GPUs.

You can find out more about it HERE!

 

[T'Flok]

AMD Fusion? Hot damn! It better be a breakthrough in computer tech! :

 

[Stallion]

That Fusion thing just sounds like it's asking for trouble. I heard too that Intel bought McAfee a few days back - I guess they're planning on hardware-level virus protection, or something. :

 

[T'Flok]

McAfee?

 

[Thagarr]

Yeah, I saw that mate. Won't it be wonderful to have all that code hardcoded into the BIOS? Then every time there is an update, you gotta flash your BIOS, which we all know is a perfectly safe procedure that NEVER goes wrong! Flashing your nvram constantly is a great idea!

Hardware company's should stick with hardware!

 

[T'Flok]

Indeed! :

 

[Stallion]

I only ever had to flash the BIOS on my old machine once - strange things happened. : Very strange things. :urgh

 

[Thagarr]

Yup, with older boards it was very much a crap shoot, and most of the time even if the upgrade flashed properly, your motherboard was never as stable. Newer boards are a LOT more stable, you can usually get by with one or two upgrades now. Newer Gigabyte boards have a DualBIOS, a really cool feature, if one dies the other takes over. I sure wouldn't wanna be updating them once a week though!

 

[T'Flok]

Newer motherboards are much reliable? :blink: Does this mean my new computer's motherboard is old? : Well.. it did have it's capacitors fried.. two times in fact and then some trojans invaded my computer turned my Windows XP core files upside down. Not fun. :

By the way when I first read this thread I thought of the gun in Doom game which name is "BFG".