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Trying Radeon after a lot of years - not impress with Diamond so far

mrjoltcola

mrjoltcola

Senior member
I haven't bought a Radeon card in many years, most of the cards I've owned have been GeForce cards from EVGA or XFX. Since I wanted to move up past the 1GB frame buffer, I just sold my GTX 560s.

This weekend I bought a Diamond Radeon 6950 at Microcenter. I was debating between the EVGA GTX 570, 580 and the Radeons. They did not have the Sapphire, XFX, or ASUS Radeons in stock, so I went with Diamond, and stuck with the 6950 thinking I might be able to unlock the shaders. Right out of the box, I'm a bit disappointed.

1) Just comparing, EVGA normally puts molex -> PCI-Express adapters in the box. Though I don't need them, it is always nice to have them, especially when I resell or trade to someone with different needs. Diamond just pretty much put the card and a CD in the box, thats it.

2) The most frustating aspect is that only one of the DVI ports are dual link. So my 2nd 30" display is stuck on 1280x800 until next week when I can order a display port adapter. Wow! 6-port Eyefinity, but can't push 2 x dual link DVI out of box without adapters, so I have to pull my GTX 9800 from the other machine so I can run until the adapters arrive. I just paid $289 for the card and have to buy adapters. Every card I've owned since the GeForce 7000 series has supported dual link DVI, so I'm just curious, is this typical of the Radeons or just something they started with the 6900 series to push display port? (I'm all for display port, but I have to drive legacy stuff too, and mostly am just annoyed I did not think to check this before leaving the store 2 hours away).

3) The Diamond site doesn't even show driver downloads for the 2GB 6950. The model isn't listed.

4) I came home, did research and found that other Radeon 6950 models included a free game and rebates. Whoopee.

I'm just not impressed with the total package, considering the price level and what I normally get from other vendors. The card will end up costing me more than the sticker price by the time I add adapters, and subtract that free Dirt game.

On the plus side:

1) The card is nice and weighty, seems well built, feels like there is more to it than the 560.

2) Performance - I did run the card in a couple of games, and I'm HAPPY with the upgrade, it is a legit upgrade from a GTX 560, it has a fraction more performance at 2560x1600 than the GTX 560, but nothing astounding. However, a similar upgrade would have been a 560Ti 2GB, so it is sort of hard to call. After reading benchmarks, maybe the 570 2.5GB would have been the better upgrade across all games on average, but my aim is to do Eyefinity with different size displays, so there really isn't a choice on this rig since SLI needs identical resolutions, from what I've been told.


Maybe its just me, but EVGA and ASUS products always feel more polished out of the box, including driver and utilities, and the support sites are a bit better. I used to buy Diamond Viper way back when, but now I'm thinking I won't buy another one, and maybe should have opted for an alternate brand. I'm interested in any comments or experiences? What brand do you guys like for Radeon? Or someone make me feel better with my choice. 🙂
 
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Yeah, your problem seems to be with Diamond rather than AMD. You should have done more research. But why in the world did you buy the card from Microcenter? Their graphics card prices are just about always $20 or worse than what you could get from an online retailer like Newegg.com.

Asus makes both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, btw. I'm using one.
 
Diamond has always been a brand I shy away from as quality has never been a strength of theirs, pretty surprised they're still around actually.
 
Red Hawk said:
You should have done more research. But why in the world did you buy the card from Microcenter? Their graphics card prices are just about always $20 or worse than what you could get from an online retailer like Newegg.com.

Asus makes both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, btw. I'm using one.
Click to expand...

Microcenter does price matching, so I get them for the same as online price. It is just that I picked the wrong one.

I think I'll stick to EVGA and ASUS from now on.
 
You bought the wrong card. You should get the Sapphire Toxic. It comes unlocked. It might be better to buy from MC. I assume you get better support from MC than you do from an e-tailer. I don't know for certain. I've never bought anything from them. Check and see if they can get you a Toxic and exchange it for you.

Don't ever (ever!) go to the vendors sites for drivers. Go to AMD or nVidia.
 
mrjoltcola said:
Every card I've owned since the GeForce 7000 series has supported dual link DVI, so I'm just curious, is this typical of the Radeons or just something they started with the 6900 series to push display port? (I'm all for display port, but I have to drive legacy stuff too, and mostly am just annoyed I did not think to check this before leaving the store 2 hours away).
Click to expand...

All reference designed HD6950/6970 cards come with two DisplayPort 1.2 connectors, one HDMI 1.4a connector and two DVI connectors of which one is single (up-to monitor resolution 1920x1200) and the other dual-link (2560x1600). If you have a very high resolution monitor at 2560x1600 and connect your card to the single link connector, your resolution could be limited to ~1280x1024 or something close.

DisplayOptions.jpg


So the single/dual-link DVI setup is simply a design choice of AMD, not Diamond. AMD decided to add 2x mini-DP ports so that you could daisy-chain up to 6 monitors.

imageview.php


They designed the HD6900 series to support at least these 4 combinations:

Single monitor setup at 2560x1600
Dual monitor setup at 2560x1600 per monitor
Three monitors setup at 2560x1600 per monitor
Six monitors setup at 1920x1080 per monitor

Unfortunately, in doing so, you need to use either the HDMI or the mini-DP ports to drive your other monitors above 1920x1080.

You might want to confirm this with Eyefinity owners, but I am sure you can get an HDMI to DVI cable to drive your 2nd 2560x1600 monitor, foregoing having to buy the more expensive active mini-display port cable.

What about your GTX560? I was under the impression that Fermi cards run hot (i.e., 60-70*C) with 2x 2560x1600 monitors??? Perhaps this was only a problem with GTX460/470/480 cards.
 
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BD231 said:
Diamond has always been a brand I shy away from as quality has never been a strength of theirs, pretty surprised they're still around actually.
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The real diamond multimedia went out of business many years ago. That company was solid as a rock and their products were excellent, talking voodoo 1 / aureal / s3 virge / rendition verite era. They were widely considered the best and were definitely the most popular, they had retail shelf space everywhere and it mattered back then, because online sales had not taken as much of a hold during that time.

A few years later they went bankrupt and many years later, was brought back to life. I don't know who resurrected Diamond, but its not the same...not even close.
 
It is standard practice to get drivers directly from AMD or Nvidia.

The 5xxx series of cards also have one single link DVI port and one dual link.

The budget brands do tend to skimp on accessories, Diamond is definetly in that category.

I would go for an Asus, MSI, or Gigabyte card next time if you want all the bells and whistles.

The budget brands are good for the card without any frills. Don't expect great support, good accessories, or even being able to overclock at all.

Maybe some research would help, things change so fast it pays to keep up.
 
Diamond is a poor vendor, they are in the class of Visiontek, ECS, Sparkle, Palit and I would even add Sapphire.

These companies are a huge PITA to RMA with and communication is awful. ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Zotac and Galaxy are also usually quite poor in terms of communication, but there is not the need to actually push to get an RMA like you do with the first mentioned vendors.

Buy EVGA or XFX if you don't want hassles.
 
RussianSensation said:
You might want to confirm this with Eyefinity owners, but I am sure you can get an HDMI to DVI cable to drive your 2nd 2560x1600 monitor, foregoing having to buy the more expensive active mini-display port cable.

What about your GTX560? I was under the impression that Fermi cards run hot (i.e., 60-70*C) with 2x 2560x1600 monitors??? Perhaps this was only a problem with GTX460/470/480 cards.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info on the HDMI converter, I will look into it. I sure hope so, because otherwise, it turns a $270 card into a $350 card for me.

As far as the GTX 560, I never tried it in a game in dual mode, so I can't say. I imagine it would have run hot, and would have been a slideshow, as I played between 30-40 FPS in Crysis, and closer to the 30 FPS in Crysis 2 at single monitor max res, so two monitors would probably tank it. It is still a great card, and for a dual display setup, I'd have to continue to recommend it for price and performance.

So does anyone know whether I can do Eyefinity with monitors across two cards, on both dual-link DVI ports?
 
TakeNoPrisoners said:
Maybe some research would help, things change so fast it pays to keep up.
Click to expand...

Yes, point taken. It was dumb to buy the card without checking. I knew the 6950 was a good price/perf card, but just never thought to check the dual-link DVI issue, since no card I've bought since 2005 over $180 has lacked 2 x dual link. I was using an 8800 GTX 320MB before the GTX 560.

Mainly I'm annoyed at the thought of spending $$ on adapters when the money could go towards display or GPU.
 
I think the Diamond brand name has been bought and sold since the glory days of the Viper cards. Last i heard a chinese oem bought the name to slap on their cards.
 
I thought HDMI only supported up to 1920x1200?
 
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