Me too, my mainboard is using a nForce 570 SLI chipset, and it performs wonderfully, but giving lanux conditions, this is the best he can get without investing 200$ in that Asus mainboard. VIA gave me good results in the past, they're not up to the level of performance of nVidia chipsets, but they do a decent job. Some blame could be put onto Intel and AMD, particularly Intel, which VIA accused time ago of being bastards when it came to provide license renewal for they can produce chipsets for the Core 2 Duo.

One has 20 pins in the connector and the other 24

OK, enough jokes. The 24-pin connector is the most current specification, ATX v2.2. The extra 4 pins were added to give enough power for the PCI-Express slot, for graphic cards that lack the 6-pin PCI-e connector. In "older" motherboards, there used to be an extra 4-pin connector, that was rectangular, not squared like the one used for the ATX extra connector (the little one located near the purple printer port in the ASRock mainboard)

My friend, your question really puzzled me. It seems that you don't have to worry, apparently that connector is used when you're running a SLI combo, and was used to power high-end AGP cards (not that it's used here) as well.

Anyway, if you buy a somewhat powerful card, most need a 6-pin PCI-e connector, so the lack of that connector is out of question.

Ah, the whole thing is complicated

thanks for the clarifications.. i was reading another review & the reviewer mentioned about instability caused by lower voltage but apparently there is a BIOS fix. and this got me thinking, albeit in the wrong direction..

The ASUS card head on. It's the best of the three, better than the Leadtek because of the company, and better than the Gigabyte because it's DirectX10 compliant and does not sport the infamous "Turbo Cache". Both are silent so... the only thing you're missing with the Asus is the "Xpand Rally" game that comes with the Gigabyte, but don't worry, I have a copy if you wish

I've just read your comment about Gothic 3 on tinjaw's giveaway post, and so I just logged to ask something: are you planning to use this new computer with the card I recommended you to play Gothic 3?

(No, you aren't, no, you aren't, no...)

Phew! I thought you were upgrading your main computer and so I was fearing I recommended you such card. I doubt so, it'll run but I suspect it won't be as capable as your 7600, just starting by the memory (DDRD2 vs. DDR3, faster the latter), and then staring at cold numbers (memory bandwidth and fill rate) shows that the 7600 beats the 8500 by a x2 factor. But well, you can test it yourself when you assemble the computer

(On a side note: Hooray! 500 posts!)

Dammit! I didn't take a shot!