Is there ANY physical difference between ATI and saphirre 9800pros?

[nick1985]

i told my RA that there isnt and he insists that the ATI cards are superior and perform better in benchmarks. i told him that sappirre makes the ATI branded cards for them, and that they are exactly the same.

who is right?

 

[someone16]

They do not perform any better in any way if it is the same card, diff brand. I think ATI has a better warranty though, not sure

 

[SickBeast]

The ATi retail cards used to be clocked higher than the OEM Sappire ones back in the days of the R8500. Today they should perform the same, but the ATi cards have a 3-year warranty for the retail ones which makes them superior IMO.

 

[Bucksnort]

Sapphire makes many of todays built by ATI cards also. Only difference is the warranty, same cards.

 

[nick1985]

so what the heck was he talking about when he said that the ATI's perform better in benchies than sappirres?

 

[shiftomnimega]

Maybe he was showing off to you with mad computer knowledge. *wink* *wink*

 

[Dabappa]

There is talk in one of the "Hot Deals" threads about some new Sapphire 9800 Pro's with a crippled memory interface.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=40&threadid=1314642&enterthread=y

So you might want to be extra careful when shopping.

 

[txxxx]

Originally posted by: nick1985
so what the heck was he talking about when he said that the ATI's perform better in benchies than sappirres?

If there's any difference, its in the range of 1-2%. What where you expecting?

 

[johnjkr1]

"so what the heck was he talking about when he said that the ATI's perform better in benchies than sappirres"

he doesn't know what he is talking about. They are all reference designs for the most part. The only difference would be the memory interface ,which I haven't seen an definitive proof of yet. And that is only on the OEM version of the sapphire, all the retails have a 256bit memory pipeline.