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I'm considering a Creative Nvidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256MB

That's the exact card I own. I got the one by BFG Technologies, which is a good thing because they have a lifetime warranty and lifetime 24 hour telephone tech support. I've called their tech support before, and they are the Real Deal. They know what they're talking about.

After solving a problem with my operating system that crashed the drivers (discussed in another thread: NT5 Server Plus TS crashes nvidia), and after nvidia fixed their "smoke slowdown bug" in their drivers, I am extremely happy with its performance and its quality. Of course, I'm running it at 8x, so your experience at 4x might be different, not sure.

The card is over a year old at this point, and there are much faster cards on the market now, but those cards are also much more expensive. That card happens to play Doom 3 very well. I'm told its performance on Half-Life 2 will be significantly slower than the comparable ATI cards, but still in the playable and acceptable range.

If I had it to do over again, though, I might have chosen to go with an ATI card instead, because I don't think I would have had as many driver problems early-on. Also, the ATI cards will perform better in the Half-Life 2 engine, and I'm really looking forward to playing that.

I paid $500.00 for my Geforce FX 5900 Ultra a year ago. How much are they selling for now?