Sapphire a good brand?

[Hey Zeus]

5850? Anyone have it? Any problems? QUICKLY. Going to order tonight

 

[Hey Zeus]

Nevermind. It would be shipped from california and thats a thursday timeframe. The XFX one would ship from the Joisey warehouse and be here on tuesday

 

[hclarkjr]

thought i told you to get the X2 D:

 

[Shilohen]

I always loved my Sapphire products and never had any issues with them. That being said, since I always bought from them, I can hardly do any comparison.

 

[Hey Zeus]

thought i told you to get the X2 D:

I can't put money into a 4 series card

 

[happy medium]

Hey good choice Zeus,she should overclock like a beast. Forget that 4850x2 spaceheater. J/k hclakjr.

The 5850 supports software voltage tweaks also,I believe.
My 5750 did not.

 

[Clinkster]

For future reference, Sapphire is nice. Got a Sapphire 4850 a little over a year ago, got to overclock it modestly, still kicking today.

 

[Wogdog]

To OP, Newegg has the Sapphire with a 600w Thermotake PS for 289.98, so basically get a free power supply with purchase. Not sure of the quality of the PS though. Plus you save a penny off the 299.99. Think Sapphire is a decent brand, ok reviews.

 

[Schadenfroh]

IIRC, Sapphire used to manufacture the first-party branded ATI cards for ATI (at least some of them). I owned a Sapphire x1950 Pro AGP, hardware was fine, bundle was practically non-existent, but you do not buy video cards for the bundle.

The drivers were a nightmare, likely due to the fact that the card was primarily for PCI-E and the nForce 3's chipset driver support was killed by nVidia. Poor support for the AGP card + nonexistent support for the motherboard's chipset = recipe for fail.

 

[spinejam]

Sapphire has been an ati manufacturer for many years and they are a reputable company. they may not have the best warranty out there, but they're not terrible either.

 

[dguy6789]

Sapphire doesn't have much for warranty but the build quality is as high or higher than every other ATI manufacturer.

 

[T2k]

What's wrong with 2 years?

 

[Acanthus]

Sapphire still makes ATi branded cards.

They are fantastic.

 

[jinsaotomex4]

What's wrong with 2 years?

Nothing, except it's not a double lifetime warranty.

 

[Hey Zeus]

To OP, Newegg has the Sapphire with a 600w Thermotake PS for 289.98, so basically get a free power supply with purchase. Not sure of the quality of the PS though. Plus you save a penny off the 299.99. Think Sapphire is a decent brand, ok reviews.

I know thats why i asked. Problem is it ships from the california warehouse and it takes 3 days to get here where the XFX 5850 ships from joisey and gets here next day. I've backed away from buying items from the california warehouse because of the time in transit.

 

[Imp]

I bought a Sapphire ATI based card way back when, like 4-5 years ago, and it's still running fine after changing systems, being put in storage, and put back into use.

Never tried their support, but they're Asia based IIRC, so don't expect the best.

 

[Darkrage]

I know thats why i asked. Problem is it ships from the california warehouse and it takes 3 days to get here where the XFX 5850 ships from joisey and gets here next day. I've backed away from buying items from the california warehouse because of the time in transit.

How can you tell which warehouse its coming from?

 

[Hey Zeus]

How can you tell which warehouse its coming from?

Right before you submit your order down at the bottom it will show days in transit. 3 Days from california and 1 day from joisey for me.

 

[RaistlinZ]

What are you going to do with your 9600GT's?

 

[Hey Zeus]

What are you going to do with your 9600GT's?

They're being sold obviously. They're pending to a forum member.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I've had my Sapphire Toxic 4870 for over a year now running at overclocked speeds, no issues at all.

The one knock I've seen against Sapphire is that they charge you something like $15 for a warranty claim. So even if the card fails while under warranty due to no fault of your own, they charge you to process the warranty. That was their policy, not sure if it still is or is not these days.

 

[Darkrage]

Right before you submit your order down at the bottom it will show days in transit. 3 Days from california and 1 day from joisey for me.

Don't see anything like that at the submit order page, but thanks for the info none the less.

 

[VirtualLarry]

IIRC, Sapphire used to manufacture the first-party branded ATI cards for ATI (at least some of them). I owned a Sapphire x1950 Pro AGP, hardware was fine, bundle was practically non-existent, but you do not buy video cards for the bundle.

The drivers were a nightmare, likely due to the fact that the card was primarily for PCI-E and the nForce 3's chipset driver support was killed by nVidia. Poor support for the AGP card + nonexistent support for the motherboard's chipset = recipe for fail.

I had a similar recipe for fail when trying to use a VisionTek HD 2600 Pro AGP 256MB card, on a S939 X2 4800 rig with a 939dual-VSTA motherboard, and Win7 RC1 64-bit. It's bad enough that only 64-bit Win7 will work on this mobo, due to the NIC driver only being available for 64-bit for some reason, but the ATI Catalyst 9.12 AGP Hotfix drivers for Win7 64-bit are UNSIGNED. Which means that Win7 won't even load the drivers, without the user pressing F8 and "disable driver signing enforcement" EVERY time they boot! Thanks for nothing, ATI. Well, even worse, the drivers fail to load with a "Code 43", unless you disable dual-core support in the BIOS. Shades of Nforce3, remember the GART drivers and an ATI AGP card wouldn't load with a dual-core system either.

I tried three drivers, the Win7 auto-detected-and-installed drivers, the ATI 9.12 AGP Hotfix drivers, and the VisionTek Vista/Win7 Cat 9.7 NW release, that is supposedly officially supported (by VisionTek). NONE of those three drivers would load without disabling dual-core support.

To top it off, the card didn't even do what I wanted it to do, accelerate Flash video. Even though the 2000 series supports UVD, which supports H264 and VC-1 hardware acceleration, and the ATI Cat 9.12 drivers (unsure about the AGP hotfix ones) support HW-accelerated flash video support with Flash player 10.1 beta, for some reason either Adobe or ATI has limited Flash acceleration support for their discrete cards to just the HD4000 and HD5000 series cards, along with their integrated graphics support (HD3200/HD3300/HD4200).