EVGA has got, according to many people, the best customer service and warranty out of all the nvidia cards suppliers, however, i have personally not looked into this.
Did you mean with eVGA's step up program, free games (either in box with card itself or after registering on eVGA's website) .... that would make it significantly cheaper?
by my saying of "EVGA cards are cheaper," i literally meant just that.
8800 GTX 786mb GDDR3 575mHz core 1.8gHz memory from ASUS - $614.99
8800 GTX 786mb GDDR3 575mHz core 1.8gHz memory from EVGA - $529.99
prices attained from
www.ncix.comfrom here you can clearly see there is an $85 difference between the two vendors for the EXACT same product. in addition to EVGA's lower price, for a limited time NCIX offers $30 off plus EVGA offers a $50 mail-in rebate and the Crysis game for free. this increases the price gap between the two vendors to a whopping $165 difference.
One question: eVGA's step up program seems to me like you are just trading in your old card for a better card, which to me is the same as paying for the better card in full the first time around.
that is exactly what it is. but if, for whatever reason, you cannot buy the better card at that moment, the step-up program puts the full value of the card you just bought and puts it into the price of the better card. to put it simply, if you bought a lower-end card and wish to purchase a better card, you will have to sell your old card, because your old card has been officially "used," you will not be able to sell it at the same price at which you purchased it. the step-up program insures that you will not lose any money when you upgrade your card by giving you the full purchase price of your card.