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Inspired by another thread: how do you rank Video Card Manufacturers?

C

CurseTheSky

Diamond Member
Take the following list and break it down into five tiers according to which brands you trust and dis-trust. The criteria is warranty / support first, component quality and features second. So, a brand that makes reference cards with no frills other than a different color scheme a logo but has a great warranty and gives excellent support scores higher than a company that makes cards with ten fans and huge overclocks, but is nowhere to be found when there's a card to RMA.

We all obviously can't try out a card from every single manufacturer, so you can base your rating off of your personal experiences as well as the testimony of others that you have heard. Try not to bash a company simply because of one person's experience, however; if you've heard repeated complaints from multiple people on the other hand, that would be a reason to rate them lower.

If you have no experience (personally or from others' testimony) with a particular company, simply leave them off the list.

Tiers:
[Superb]
[Good]
[Acceptable]
[Problematic]
[Atrocious]

Current Video Card Manufacturers
ASUS
BFG (defunct - for reference only)
Biostar
Diamond
ECS
EVGA
Galaxy
Gigabyte
HIS
Jaton
MSI
Palit
PNY
Powercolor
Sapphire
Sparkle
Visiontek
XFX
Zotac

Example (purely for demonstration)
[Superb] - EVGA
[Good] - ASUS, Gigabyte, BFG, XFX
[Acceptable] - Sapphire, PowerColor, PNY, MSI, HIS
[Problematic] - ECS, Biostar
[Atrocious] - Visiontek
 
Somewhat OT but I can't believe how many manufacturers there actually are. Besides myself... I know 0 people that actually buy gaming video cards.

PS Jaton still exists??
 
That is too many categories. Basically for me there are companies I will buy cards from and those that I won't.

[Will buy] - ASUS, XFX, Gigabyte, Sapphire, EVGA
[Will not buy] - HIS, ECS, Biostar

Reasons:
For all the 'Will Buy' companies I have had good experience with cards or motherboards they have made. I have owned ASUS boards for quite a while and owned plenty of Gigabyte boards as well. I recently purchased a Gigabyte 6950, so we will see how awesome it is soon. Sapphire is the exception, I have never owned anything they have made, but have heard plenty of good about them.

For the 'Will not Buy' I have had bad experiences either with their cards or their motherboards. ECS and Biostar motherboards have let me down a few times in the past and as such I will avoid their products. I purchased a HIS 4890 back in the day and it had horrible capacitor whine, I exchanged it for a refund.

Mostly though it doesn't matter at all since most of the time these cards are all reference design anyways. Then usually it comes down to warranty and tech support.
 
Yeah, what Overlord said. I also take their website as a factor if I'm unsure about a manufacturer. If it's well organized, easy to navigate, and has ample easy-to-find product information I'll feel a lot more confident about a purchase.

Also name. What gamer would actually choose a video card with the name "Sparkle" on it? With so many others to choose from that puts them right at the bottom. lol
 
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My 7800 gt is a Leadtek that's going on five years in March. I'd say it's a pretty solid card.

I have retired it from gaming two years back and the sample size is one, but I'm happy with it.
 
I've been using Asus exclusively for the last 4 upgrades and have been nothing but pleased. The only company i refuse to buy from now is PNY since I had a 7600GT and 7900GS both fail on me. Switched to Asus after and have been coasting.
 
I would say Evga and Asus are on the top. Gigabyte, MSI, XFX, Sapphire in the middle. And all others are lower tier.
 
EVGA, XFX, Visiontek are superb for their warranty
HIS Acceptable
Haven't really purchased from many other brands though some of the older ones
I'm not sure are even still making video cards include:
Diamond, Trident, S3 I'd rate these as acceptable.
 
doesn't matter to me. If it's reference design it is reference design. Otherwise I look for the best custom design. The warranty is a minimum of 2 years by law here in Denmark, so if anything should happen, you would just get a new one. One of my friends had a 4870x2 failing after 1.5 years, and he got a 5870 as replacement, he was very happy. 🙂
 
Patrick Wolf said:
Also name. What gamer would actually choose a video card with the name "Sparkle" on it? With so many others to choose from that puts them right at the bottom. lol
Click to expand...


Since Sparkle is the reference builder for ATi/AMD, it's almost stupid to say you wouldn't buy one. Outside their horrible RMA system, it's one of the best.


Wouldn't buy.....ASUS, Power Color

ASUS because their RMA process is absolutely the worst I've ever dealt with in my life, and after RMA'ing two ASUS specific cards (not reference cards), I'll never willingly give my money to ASUS for another video card again. And you cannot judge ASUS's video card RMA process from their motherboard RMA process....handled by two independent "centers" and groups of people. The motherboard center is great.....the video card center is worthy of PowerColor, at best.
 
They are all mostly reference cards.

I've had numerous Zotac cards that have been excellent.

People pay for name.

I've currently got sapphire cards that work fine in gaming rig. I have Powercolor in htpc. I had Asus in HTPC before that.

I've only had one video card ever die on me in 15 years. It was a ATI 9800 Pro by Sapphire. It was 3+ yrs old.

I recently bought a Sparkle 470 for somebody, works fine.


My point: they all work!
 
Bigystyle said:
My point: they all work!
Click to expand...

I would expect most modern cards to work without a hitch, aside from the inevitable few DOAs. However, many cards will die after several years (G80-based cards in particular, and some G92's), and while most of us here would simply toss them aside, having long since upgraded, others will lament the untimely death and contact the company for a replacement. That's where the brand that you chose to buy comes in.
 
Meghan54 said:
Since Sparkle is the reference builder for ATi/AMD, it's almost stupid to say you wouldn't buy one. Outside their horrible RMA system, it's one of the best.
Click to expand...

Link? Sparkle only sells nvidia cards currently. And if their RMA system is horrible how are they one of the best? Why would anyone choose them over EVGA or XFX which also offer lifetime warranties.

And I would probably buy a low-end sparkle card if it tickled my fancy, but there again so many other choices.
 
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The site [removed] has a page on brands. They list the top brands (in alphabetical order) as:

Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, HIS, MSI, PNY, Sapphire, and XFX

My personal favorite used to be BFG but I guess I need to find a new one.
 
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[Problematic] - PowerColor

OK this is only on one experience. Basically a supposed "factory-overclock" card and I actually need to underclock the memory to have it stable in games. Unfortunately, since I bought it at the same time as a dud hard drive and having very little spare time, I didn't diagnose the issue until it was too late (it's a PITA to return stuff in the UK after a couple of months). I'm of the opinion it was a design fault since they were selling the card for like a month before they replaced it with one using different memory chips...

Cheers for thread though, was just wondering if it was a bit lazy to make a thread asking whether to get the XFX or pay a bit more for a Gigabyte considering it's a reference card. Now happy to grab the XFX.
 
Ive never heard tell of Sparkle being ATI's reference manufacturer. (i also doubt it since Sparkle doesnt make any retail cards that use ATI)

I always thought it was Sapphire.
 
I was just wondering about this today: XFX 6950 for $309.00 or Saphire for $304.00? I guess the quality is about the same from the responses above.
 
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I ain't touching another Sapphire card over $100 ever again. First hand experience. Bought 40 Sapphire 3870's cards a few years back for a 40 system build for my lab. Remember a few years back the 3870 was still expensive; it was not like a 1-item-purchase-with-huge-rebate, it was 40 of them at retail price at the time, which cost more than a pretty penny.

Results: 3 of those cards were DOA. About 1/4 of the 40 had old BIOS on them, causing the fan to spin up and down randomly (a confirmed bug). And during the flashing process, I recall another 3-4 cards brick, making me put in a PCI card and blind-flash their BIOS to revive them.

Then just before Xmas, I bought a Sapphire 5450 for my media PC. Again, it DOA on me. I returned it of course. This was the straw that broke...

Sapphire has lost a huge customer in me.
 
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