Looking at an on-line store for nVidia cards, the vendors listed are:AOPEN, APOLLO, ASUS, BFG, CHAINTECH, eVGA, GIGABYTE, LEADTEK, MSI, PNY, XFX .Does anyone have opinions on which ones are better, if any? I assume the basic OEM product is the same, and the differences are drivers and/or games included?Thanks- Bruce.

Bruce,Please take a look at my post here:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=11444&page=I think it sums up everything I have to say on this matter. Of course, some people may disagree and I'm sure they'll contribute to this thread. ;)Hope this helps.Edwin

Thanks Edwin, much appreciated.I read through the entire thread, and noted that you had advised also on motherboards, and the SLI option of adding another video card at a later date. If one is to later retrofit a 2nd video card for SLI I assume it needs to be the same type of video card- but other then that is there any additional parity that applies that would dicate buying two of them at the same time rather than going back to buy the second later (as I recall that FS9 cannot make any use of SLI, so the second card would not be required at this time).Thanks- Bruce.

Hi Bruce,You're very welcome.Well, buying two at the same time ensures that they are indeed exactly the same. Depending on how long passes before you get the second video card, the model that you had as your first video card could be discontinued. But other than that, there's no real advantage to buying the two cards together vs. buying them separately.Incidentally, when SLI first came out, the two cards had to be identical i.e. from the same add-in board manufacturer as well (i.e. a Leadtek 7800GTX had to be paired with a Leadtek 7800GTX). The latest Detonator drivers from NVIDIA got rid of that limitation so that as long as the GPUs are the same, SLI will work. To be on the safe side, if I had the choice, I would still buy two of the same. But theoretically, with the new drivers (I have not tested), say your first card is a Leadtek 7800GTX and when you get around to buying a second card for SLI, you find that Leadtek has discontinued the 7800GTX line, getting an XFX 7800GTX should still work in SLI.Hope this is clear and hope this helps.Edwin

Thanks Edwin, again much appreciated.Bruce.