Crappy Rma situation

[RussianSensation]

Is this your setup at home? Chances are you are going to sell these 5870s the minute HD6950/70 or HD6990s come out, right ?

 

[Xed]

For the record, XFX's nonreference 5870 is better than their reference one in terms of thermals, noise.

In my case that isn't true. Memory went bad on my reference 5870 and they shipped me back the revised version. It runs about 5c warmer at idle and 3-4c at load and is noticeably louder at load.

Works fine though so I'm not going to complain.

 

[bryanW1995]

just be happy they didn't offer you a 6850 as a replacement. sure it's a bit of bad luck, but you overvolted and oc'd your old card into oblivion and still got a card that runs at the same clocks back from the vendor. consider yourself lucky that you went with xfx instead of any other amd vendor.

 

[nyker96]

Whether its a upgrade or downgrade can be argued. I think the OP is not getting screwed getting a new replacement.
The reference 5870's all have voltage adjustment. This is left out of almost all non reference. They use cheaper, less expensive voltage IC's . Most times reference cards are over engineered, and area's that can be scaled back and remain in tolerances are done to save money in non-reference.
Reference 5870's had those nifty back-plates.
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=105483

really? this is surprising, I usually buy non-ref designs because they support better cooling, extra niceties and usually are made for supporting higher clocks/OC. Your account of this maybe be just isolated cases. For instance the last 2 cards I bought, MSI hd 4850 OC has a huge hsf runs about 10-15C cooler than ref design under load plus it has a 4+1 power plant to support extra OC. and the Asus gtx 460 TOP has a nice direct touch cooler that's about 15C better than ref cooler under load. the GTX 460 TOP also flipped the 2x6 pin connector to top rather than the ref design of facing the back, this makes installation a lot easier. Asus also reinforced the PCB so the added weight of the awesome hsf won't break anything. Even better they tailored the BIOS to allow vcore adjustment to 1.087v which allows for more OC head room, ref doesn't have any of this. I mean in my experiences, the non-ref designs are superior in almost every way to the ref design. Even the PCB Asus used is a nice black.

For OP: BTW, all XFX RMA are refurbs, I did a RMA of 8800GT before and gave me a refurb card, it was clearly used and scratches everywhere, but hey it worked just like the old card that died so I didn't mind at all.