gfx card brand superiority

[IlllI]

anyone have experience with palit?

 

[kami]

No major preference since I've never had a DOA or RMA *knock on wood*

If I am buying a reference card I just go with any major trusted brand like evga, msi, etc... but lately prefer custom designs. The overclockability and temperatures/fan noise is always so much better than reference cards. MSI's Twin Frozr III cooler is a full 30C cooler than a reference GTX 570 cooler under load.

 

[taltamir]

Here is how reference design GPUs happen.

AMD/nVidia designs a GFX card based on a GPU. They have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn manufacture it.
It is then sold to partners like eVGA, ASUS, etc...
The put a sticker on the video card, put it in a pretty box, and sell it to the customer.

Exceptional cards get tested. For example, the eVGA 8800GTX Ultra Black pearl was a 900$ variety of that popular 600$ card which involved 2 guys in eVGA sitting in a room and binning those cards.
Some are just overclocked under 5% without any binning.
Some are purchased sans the headsink/fan to get a custom one from the board partner.

A rare few are actually redesigned cards by a board partner.

So saying that reliability of cards differs between makes is bollocks. What differs is price and customer service. And customer services differs quite a lot.

 

[ViRGE]

anyone have experience with palit?

Palit is no longer in business in North America, so even if anyone has any experience with them, it's going to be largely meaningless.

 

[bononos]

Here is how reference design GPUs happen.

AMD/nVidia designs a GFX card based on a GPU. They have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn manufacture it.
It is then sold to partners like eVGA, ASUS, etc...
The put a sticker on the video card, put it in a pretty box, and sell it to the customer.

Exceptional cards get tested. For example, the eVGA 8800GTX Ultra Black pearl was a 900$ variety of that popular 600$ card which involved 2 guys in eVGA sitting in a room and binning those cards.
......

So are the price differences btwn Asus/Gigabyte vs Powercolor/Sapphire mostly irrelevant to the quality of components used on the cards?

I suspected the same about overclocked models and I always avoid them.

 

[Stuka87]

So are the price differences btwn Asus/Gigabyte vs Powercolor/Sapphire mostly irrelevant to the quality of components used on the cards?

I suspected the same about overclocked models and I always avoid them.

If the cards are reference, there is little difference. If they are custom, then there could be differences in the boards. Typically in the power distribution and caps used. Can't really talk for ASUS/Gigabyte, but PowerColor vs Sapphire I have seen almost no difference.

 

[3DVagabond]

I remembered reading that lifetime warranties may only be referring to the lifetime of the product cycle (not the lifetime of the card in the owners possession). So the warranty ends if XFX stops selling say the 5850 2 yrs down the road.

I don't remember what brand that was, but I don't think it was XFX.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

It used to matter more when there was more room to customize the cards, these days it's almost always a reference card and it's just the cooler that changes.

I'd say it definitely matters less than it used to and probably way less than good/bad PSU brands since a bad PSU can die quickly and a good one will last you a long time.

I used to be a big fan of ASUS video cards and more recently MSI, I have respect for EVGA as well despite never owning one, current card is MSI GTX 580 twin Frozr II, very happy with this card as a replacement for my dead 5970.

 

[taltamir]

So are the price differences btwn Asus/Gigabyte vs Powercolor/Sapphire mostly irrelevant to the quality of components used on the cards?

I suspected the same about overclocked models and I always avoid them.

Most of the time.
If they are reference design, they were made in the same factory and just got a different sticker.

Some rare cards get custom designed by a board partner but those are not at all common.

 

[exar333]

I miss the old Gainward 'golden samples'. Those rocked.

 

[ss284]

Since it pretty much boils down to service and RMA support, I've had good experiences with sapphire and asus, bad experience with powercolor and gigabyte.