Video Card Manufacturer's & SSD Opinions

[Dawnseven]

Two questions for the peanut gallery...

1. Does it really matter who the manufacturer of a video card is? After reading a crap ton of reviews I've decided to upgrade my old GTX 550 Ti to a GTX 960, but now I'm faced with another choice. MSI? EVGA? Gigabyte? Asus? PNY? Zotac?? Aaaaaaahhhhhhh! The cards all look so wildly different for supposedly being the same thing. :/

2. Let me just say ... I'm a 40-something "old fart". In my day we had hard drives with platters and we liked it that way. My hubby is pushing me to get an SSD as part of my upgrades and I'm being a big chicken shit about it. My understanding is that it would just have the OS on it, and I'd run my games and Excel and whatnot off of my regular hard drive (a reformatted 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black). Do I have that right? Do people who do this find it to be a pain in the ass? If I do it, will I have to constantly remember to install things to E:? It sounds annoying and I don't know anyone else with an SSD to ask. I live a sheltered life I guess.

[Denpepe]

The GPU brand does not matter that much look at what is usefull for you. Some models are slightly faster due to beeing factory overclocked other brands give longer warranties or you can even choose the one which color scheme you like. I have used EVGA, ASUS and MSI in the past and they all worked good.

As for the SSD, you can use it like any other hard drive the main issue is that the more affordable models are in the range of 240 GB and that is not a lot so that's why people advise to put stuff you use less frequently on a slower and cheaper mechanical hard drive to save space for the important stuff. I recently built a pc for my dad with just a 240 GB SSD since he only needs windows, a browser and a couple of games on his pc. Prices of SSD's are comming down so depending on budget and need you could always buy a bigger SSD and not use the HDD, I have been using multiple HDD's since like forever so it comes natural to me.

[Artorius]

An SSD is faster, yes. It is in fact much faster. But don't expect the entire world to change. You can play around with some fancy laptop at a mall to see the difference by yourself.

[Cows For Life]

Two questions for the peanut gallery...

1. Does it really matter who the manufacturer of a video card is? After reading a crap ton of reviews I've decided to upgrade my old GTX 550 Ti to a GTX 960, but now I'm faced with another choice. MSI? EVGA? Gigabyte? Asus? PNY? Zotac?? Aaaaaaahhhhhhh! The cards all look so wildly different for supposedly being the same thing. :/

2. Let me just say ... I'm a 40-something "old fart". In my day we had hard drives with platters and we liked it that way. My hubby is pushing me to get an SSD as part of my upgrades and I'm being a big chicken shit about it. My understanding is that it would just have the OS on it, and I'd run my games and Excel and whatnot off of my regular hard drive (a reformatted 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black). Do I have that right? Do people who do this find it to be a pain in the ass? If I do it, will I have to constantly remember to install things to E:? It sounds annoying and I don't know anyone else with an SSD to ask. I live a sheltered life I guess.

Put your OS and all of your most commonly used applications and games on the SSD. If you're worried about reliability, buy an Intel SSD.

[Pterodactylus]

For GPU's, I used to be the loudest MSI fanboi in the world. They deleivered great GPU's until my 470. The fans died way before they should have. RMA'd, got another 470 - fans died. RMA'd that - they sent me a 560ti instead - fans died. I said enough of it and got an ASUS. My buddy has an MSI 970 and guess what - his fans died. And if you read about MSI and their fans, this is an ongoing problem for them. EVGA has good Customer service, but who cares? I'd rather not have to deal with customer service at all and get a decent product, so the card to get is the Asus GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($180.99 @ SuperBiiz)

As for your SSD the Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($97.89 @ OutletPC) is a nice one to have. I have my OS and my top played games on there. It is not a pain in the ass managing what goes where, and if you eff up and put something in the wrong spot, it is not the end of the world. I think it's worth it and the 850 EVO is a great selection and carries a longer warranty than some of its peers (which speaks to quality).

[Nengal]

1. You're going to get different answers from almost everyone on this. People have good and bad experiences with various manufacturers. I always buy EVGA cards, but that's me. I've always had a good experience with them. Basically, I'm saying it probably doesn't matter too much. Just pick one based on overall reviews and price.

2. SSDs are really nice and the price has dramatically dropped over the past few years. Definitely worth grabbing a 128 or 250GB one. Yes, you'll have to manage your installation locations when installing new programs or saving files. Not that big of a deal. Just format the 1TB HDD and set up the folders however you want. It's just as simple as remembering to click the drop down arrow or browse button to change folder locations during installation.

[Deleted]

For the ssd, buy one pref 240/250/256gb one cause 128 fill up in no time. Pref brands are crucial, samsung, intel, some corsair neutron series. Get your o/s and games you usually play on it. Storage drives...well...are for storage

I don't know about PNY/Zotac, i consider them below the rest. Asus/Evga/Gigabyte/Msi are all good get the cheapest provided they are clocked the same.

[Blackmist]

For the SSD I would recommend a large one. I got a 500GB Samsung 850 EVO for £130.

I highly recommend putting WoW on it. Many games won't benefit that much, as much of your load times are actually spent unpacking data. WoW has a lot of random data access. Other games might put all the data for a level in one place so they load quite fast anyway. You'll get some improvement, but not a massive amount.

I'd certainly recommend putting all your other programs on it. It just feels better when a program opens instantly, rather than churning for 10 seconds.

[Artorius]

More like 1~2 seconds rather than 10.