Power Color Cards...please give findings and opinions

[etrin]

Well I have been wanting a 9700 for 6 months now. $399 no way
$350 hum...
Well I found this
EVIL COMMANDO 2 (Model XF97-C3G)
Radeon 9700 Professional Edition Our Price: $309.00

Is has all the cables and disk but after hearing some powercolor horror stories I then said..HUM $50 more for the sapphire????

This has 9700 pro specs but I have read stories about poor build quality and inferior chips giving quote "POOR" 2d desktop clarity and fuzzy text.

Does anyone here have a powercolor card?

Please any and all opinions on power color are welcome

thanks big time...lots of money for a card and want to make sure before I buy

Etrin

 

[Peter]

I'm on an early PowerColor 7500LE here. 2D quality stank bigtime. I inquired with their support, learned that they had modified some components after the early production run I had. They gave me the information what to do, I did that, and hey presto, excellent 2D.
I guess they have learnt the 2D quality trick meanwhile

 

[BoberFett]

Don't know about the 9700, but the memory they used on their 9100 is crap.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

there's a reason pwercolor has been called PowerCRAP!!

 

[etrin]

Thanks very much for your help.
I am now looking at sapphire and ATI and you can get the
ATI at their site for $299 so I am sure that others might be cheaper.

Thanks again
Etrin

 

[Viper96720]

Just get it best buy they got ATI retail 9700pros for $299.
http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11176473&m=488&cat=521&scat=522

 

[mamisano]

I have a PowerColor 9700 NP, Retail box. Works fine at 330/310.

2D and 3D both look great.

 

[Mloot]

I had a Powercolor Radeon 9000 PCI, and they stuck it with a 64-bit memory interface.:frown:

 

[vss1980]

I would say avoid PowerColor cards...... before they became a big ATI partner like they are now, they made cards based on other chipsets which pretty much were bad compared to the competition.

 

[etrin]

Thanks big time for the info

I think I will keep looking. After hearing about the power color problems its not worth saving a buck or two.

Just had a friend buy a 9700 sapphire and he is saying WOW you just need a 9700 and save the extra money.

Lets see black friday I bet the 9700 pro will be $149 at bestbuy...
Last time I tried one of those it was 6am line around the building and raining...NO THANKS

 

[nemesismk2]

Rubbish build quality, unreliable, get an RMA number from them early because you'll probably need it!

 

[Blastman]

I have a Sapphire 7500 64MB DDR 270/183. Even though it had slower memory than the retail, 2D quality was top notch and the GPU ran 340Mhz easily. It would make it halfway through 3D Mark 2001se at 360mhz.

 

[bgeh]

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Don't know about the 9700, but the memory they used on their 9100 is crap.

i agree, i have one and the memory's maker is Etron Tech

 

[vss1980]

I got EtronTech memory on my Radeon 9000Pro from Sapphire and it works fine, has plenty of headroom for overclocking. I dont think its the manufacturer thats the problem, its probably that they may have used lower spec speed memory.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: Mloot
I had a Powercolor Radeon 9000 PCI, and they stuck it with a 64-bit memory interface.:frown:

No surprise there, it's in plain view from their product photo. The AGP 7500LE and at least one 9000 model is like that too.

The reason is you can't do 128-bit memory on a low profile card, because you'd have to have memory chips above the main chip for that.

 

[dguy6789]

I got a Powercolor Evil Commando Radeon 9000 Pro 128MB. It has good and bad points. here they are:

The Good:
it is 128MB
stable
the GPU can go up and above 320 Mhz from 275
It has a cool looking heat sink

The Bad:
They gave it a freakin stock memory of 250 instead of the 275 its supposed to be
the memory wont even goto 252 stable, it crashes there(and thats pretty sad)
i get artifacts in some games(may be because of ati drivers, dont know)

SO there is good and bad, it has 8GB/s memory bandwith, but should have had 8.8

But, it is very fast, runs ut2k3 at 1024X768 at highest settigns at very high speeds, and the gpu speed capability is awesome. i would give this card a 9/10.