Most reliable 5870/5970 brands? Owners your thoughts?

[Apocalypse23]

I'm interested in knowing the 5870/5970 brand owners on Anandtech and also your personal experiences with your cards (5870/5970). Please post your thoughts, performance results, idle and load temps, customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction and if possible the amount you paid for your purchase. This is to give an idea to everyone on buying the most reliable and also the most bang for buck cards out there.

Thoughts:
I personally just bought an ASUS EAH 5870 card and am very pleased with it. The packaging was solid, the box was bundled with a free Dirt 2 key, a 3 year warranty, all for about $411 CAD with a price match. I was going to go for the XFX personally, but it was sold out in my location for quite some time, also from listening to the mixed reviews I was a little hesitant. The Asus bios apparently allows you to overclock the 5870 past the limited 900mhz as well as compared to other vendors, which was a bonus. The back of the box also talked about overclocking thereby recommending the card owners to overclock the card as well. I find this appealing from Asus. Not to be a fan boy or anything, I think a 3 year warranty is more than enough for my needs (I upgrade cards usually in 1.5-2 years). Asus products are pretty solid and none have gone bad on me, and their support services are fairly big as they are also a fairly bigger company than most other vendors.

I have personally found brands like MSI and Gigabyte to be the next step down as they do offer around 3 years of warranty I beleive but am not sure about their reliability (Msi's rma canada website isn't loading?).

Visontek offers Lifetime warranty but seem very picky and are also a smaller company so I really wouldn't deal with them.

Sapphire and Diamond seem to be the worst of the bunch from my research, also they seem to have the shortest warranty coverage.


Performance:
37C idle, load 71C with fan around 30%
Very satisfied with the noise as well, super quiet when compared to my 8800 gts 512 and also the 9800 gx2

I would personally rank 5870/5970 brands in the following order:
1)ASUS
2)XFX
3)MSi/Gigabyte
4)Visiontek
5)Sapphire
6)Diamond

Post your thoughts!

 

[zerocool84]

I have a XFX 5870. Only had it for a week but bought it cus of the double lifetime warranty. I got it for cheap but would have gone Asus if it wasn't cheap.

 

[Shilohen]

Sapphire has Vapor-X (at least sometimes currently) so, even if it's not the best warranty, I like them. I also never had issues with their cards, I might have been lucky. Double warranty is useless to me, I keep my builds until they're worth nada, then buy a new one from scratch. So most likely 5870 Vapor-X for me when prices go down.

 

[TJ Tom]

If you don't care about stuff like a free game or some fancy accessories you don't use anyway then I would go for Powercolor. That's unless the Powercolor card is just as expensive or more expensive than an XFX. I prefer XFX over every other band because of their warranty. I would never buy an ASUS card, great cards and stuff untill there's something wrong with it, then you'll regret you ever bought ASUS, but as I said they make good products, their support just sucks.

So either Powercolor if you wanna go cheap but stay with good quality or XFX if you can afford it.

 

[bryanW1995]

why is visiontek "picky"?

 

[adairusmc]

I have a HIS 5970 myself, and I have never really heard anything bad about the brand itself, though this is the first HIS card I have owned. I think I would put them ahead of visiontek and MSI myself, but thats just me.

Diamond definitely belongs on the bottom of the list though.

 

[PCboy]

Personally, I'd buy XFX and Visiontek before any of the larger manufacturers. Larger doesn't necessarily mean better.

 

[Ka0t1x]

XFX For me, double lifetime warranty. I only have a 4870, but I would go with them again.

 

[DonInKansas]

XFX for warranty. All the reference cards are the same, so I go with peace of mind.

 

[shangshang]

just a note about some of these "lifetime" warranty claims. If you RMA a card (especially a "special edition" card) and the manufacturer doesn't have it in stock, they will probably give you a slower "stock" version... or offer you the option to buy a faster card (at retail price of course)!

Under this scenario, "Lifetime warrranty" is not much better than a 2 or 3 year warranty at all.

So if you buy a card because you're attracted to the "lifetime warranty", then just buy a stock card, because chances are if you buy their "super clocked" card, they won't have it in stock if you do do an RMA in the future.

 

[ViRGE]

At this point does it really matter? All of the cards are still basically being manufactured by AMD and having the vendor slap their cooler of choice on it. No one as far as I know is actually customizing their cards besides the cooler; it's always the same PCB and components.

If that's the case, then all the cards excluding the Vapor-X (because it's the only non-reference cooler) would be equally reliable.

 

[PCboy]

just a note about some of these "lifetime" warranty claims. If you RMA a card (especially a "special edition" card) and the manufacturer doesn't have it in stock, they will probably give you a slower "stock" version... or offer you the option to buy a faster card (at retail price of course)!

Under this scenario, "Lifetime warrranty" is not much better than a 2 or 3 year warranty at all.

So if you buy a card because you're attracted to the "lifetime warranty", then just buy a stock card, because chances are if you buy their "super clocked" card, they won't have it in stock if you do do an RMA in the future.

Are you serious?

 

[crisium]

Anything except Diamond. They truly are the pits of customer service.

 

[RussianSensation]

Are you serious?

Yes, he is correct. Lifetime warranty does not mean Full Warranty, but generally a limited warranty. Under lifetime warranty (i.e., EVGA, XFX), the company is only entitled to give you a comparable product (a stock videocard is comparable to an overclocked card). Furthermore, a Limited lifetime warranty does not obligate a company to provide you with a refund should your exact card not be in stock. If a company does upgrade you to a faster card if yours is not available (i.e., EVGA), then consider that great customer service. But it is not obliged to do so.

 

[PCboy]

Yes, he is correct. Lifetime warranty does not mean Full Warranty, but generally a limited warranty. Under lifetime warranty (i.e., EVGA, XFX), the company is only entitled to give you a comparable product (a stock videocard is comparable to an overclocked card). Furthermore, a Limited lifetime warranty does not obligate a company to provide you with a refund should your exact card not be in stock. If a company does upgrade you to a faster card if yours is not available (i.e., EVGA), then consider that great customer service. But it is not obliged to do so.

No, I know what that means... but he said a 2-3 year warranty is better than Lifetime limited warranty.

 

[The-Noid]

Powercooler has been good for me.

Running 2x5870 right now.

 

[MrK6]

As far as the actual parts go, I don't think it makes a damn bit of difference, they're all the same as far as reliability is concerned (although I would love to see someone prove otherwise, what a great round-up that would be). This of course changes when your bring non-reference models into the picture. I personally got an XFX because I upgrade my graphics card frequently and the double lifetime warranty helps with the resale value.

 

[blazewit]

Yea i agree. xfx is the best because when your trying to sell an old card on ebay, its allot easier to get rid of it when you can say "full lifetime warranty with purchase." plus, xfx makes it super easy to transfer the warranty, all I had to do was log in to the support site and change the name and address to the guy I sold my 4870 to.

 

[shangshang]

No, I know what that means... but he said a 2-3 year warranty is better than Lifetime limited warranty.

I said that? Might wanna read my post again.

And you planning on keeping your card for longer than 3 years??? So why get all hung up on "lifetime"? Don't let the marketing stuff bait you. Ok maybe you, but not me.

 

[Painman]

I have an MSI 5850. It hasn't blown up yet, and not for lack of trying. The parts are all the same; unless it's a non-reference design, it probably came from the same factory as the next company's card.

If you're worried about reliability, buy an XFX for the warranty. They all have an equal chance of going tits up.

 

[Apocalypse23]

just a note about some of these "lifetime" warranty claims. If you RMA a card (especially a "special edition" card) and the manufacturer doesn't have it in stock, they will probably give you a slower "stock" version... or offer you the option to buy a faster card (at retail price of course)!

Under this scenario, "Lifetime warrranty" is not much better than a 2 or 3 year warranty at all.

So if you buy a card because you're attracted to the "lifetime warranty", then just buy a stock card, because chances are if you buy their "super clocked" card, they won't have it in stock if you do do an RMA in the future.

This is true.

Also, I'm reading up a lot of RMA issues with XFX's XT,XXX and so forth editions on the web...it could be due to the overclocked editions having a shorter lifespan all together or just more potential problems than a stock card. The whole Double Lifetime idea sounds great if you water cool, or transfer the ownership over to a second user, but the chances of you not getting that same model are high (XT, XXX, etc)...Besides, then there's that whole "pay for shipping" and "temporary replacement card" issue with RMAs...

Either they build a long lasting product or offer a better lifetime warranty, how about a 'universal ownership lifetime warranty' for example? That would make their product more appealing.

I don't personally know how much of a profit XFX is really making though with their current marketing strategy as compared to lets say Asus or Sapphire, since they may sell a lot of cards but also have lots of RMAs at the same time, plus a double lifetime warranty plan with even a greater RMA potential down the road...It's tough making money thats for sure.

 

[shangshang]

I personally prefer that a company give me a kickass 2-yr warranty BUT if anything... ANYTHING... goes wrong with my card within that 2-yr, then I want the manufacturer to either replace it within a week... or give me my money back so I can go buy something else. And no, I don't want a "substitute" slower card or loaner card. No, I don't want to "upgrade at a fee" either. Either give me the same (or better card) or give me my money back.

I'll take this 2-yr warrany ANYDAY ANYTIME over the "lifetime warranty".

Why would I do this?
1) most electronic components die within the 1st year, so a 2yr warranty covers my base.

2) I definitely don't plan on keeping a video card for life.

 

[tweakboy]

As long as the PCB is green

not cheap red or blue.
thx

 

[PCboy]

I said that? Might wanna read my post again.

And you planning on keeping your card for longer than 3 years??? So why get all hung up on "lifetime"? Don't let the marketing stuff bait you. Ok maybe you, but not me.

No, it's okay. You can stick with your OEM vendors while I'll stick with EVGA and XFX. If you like having fun talking with customer service, go for it.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Interesting poll results indeed, but only roughly 30 voters so far, the Sapphire and Asus are very close to each other with XFX taking a clear lead. I wonder how many more @ AnandTech own one of these cards.