What GPU brands do you rely on?

[Spikesoldier]

i have been evaluating a few cards from each camp and Galaxy seems to offer a nice innovative design with their cooling and they have a 3 year warranty now and a phone number you can call. Of course, EVGA is top notch.

For the AMD cards, Diamond is pretty solid. And i have recently got my hands on a couple of HIS cards that were pretty nice; the 6770 was quiet and overclocked nicely. And Gigabyte had a really nice passive HD 6770 design.

i think the name brands are all pretty good. Sapphire irritated me with their $15 RMA "processing fee"; i don't know if they still extort that from their customers or not.

first time i heard about the processing fee. i RMA'd one of my Sapphire 4890s because the fan stopped working. 2yr warranty on the card, had about 1 or 2 months left on the warranty. sent to vendor, and had a shiny replacement within a week or two.

 

[BladeVenom]

Not to be offensive at all but MSI and sapphire equated with "quality" gave me a good laugh. Try RMAing with MSI and Sapphire sometime...probably change your opinion.

To be fair, to each his own. Obviously experiences differ.

That's a matter of customer service.

Who do you think makes most of the Radeon reference cards? Whatever brand you prefer might just be a Sapphire card with another companies sticker on it.

 

[apoppin]

first time i heard about the processing fee. i RMA'd one of my Sapphire 4890s because the fan stopped working. 2yr warranty on the card, had about 1 or 2 months left on the warranty. sent to vendor, and had a shiny replacement within a week or two.

Here is my original thread back in '07
http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2011978.html

another a year later
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?208898-dont-buy-sapphire-rma-is-ridiculous

And there are many other threads about it. Hopefully Sapphire discontinued that probably illegal process

 

[Aikouka]

here's the rather unpleasant truth with the 30 day requirement: it is to weed out stupid people who can't read/follow simple instructions.

otherwise you are right, there is no real purpose to the requirement. however, there's no real legitimate reason why you didn't register either, since it doesn't cost you any real effort nor do you have to go overly out of your way.

To preface this, I know they put the serial numbers on the video card box, but I never think about registering at that point. Building a new PC is like a nerd's own personal Christmas... he does not worry about silly boxes.

I've actually been pretty good about registering my video cards as of late. What would happen to me in the past is that I'd remember to register the card mid-build (while putting it in the machine). The only problem is that I typically cannibalized at least something from my old machine (like the case) that required me to take it apart. So I wouldn't really have a computer unless I went and got my laptop.

Now I just build entirely new PCs each time. When I upgraded to an i5-2500k from an i7-860, I could have just swapped the motherboard and CPU, but I decided to just build an entirely new PC. It's more expensive (obviously), but it does provide a nice benefit of a quick and easy spare in case something strange is happening to your PC and you've got a raid in half an hour. But anyway! The benefit is that now I have a PC still available to use mid-build and I just register when I get to the video card.

Although, someone else mentioned rebate windows. Rebate windows are a lot different in nature and I don't think really apply. Rebates typically include a set amount of funds that are set aside to pay for said rebates, and you don't need money tied up for years waiting for people to finally send in the forms.

Of course I'm not placing all of the blame on eVGA. Technically I screwed up by not registering it soon enough. That doesn't mean I have to appreciate their policies though, and last thing I need is to spend $650 and get burnt again (even though I doubt I'll ever spend that much on a video card again).

 

[hdfxst]

I thought it was a third party handling the rma that was charging the 15 dollars and they no longer do that

 

[blackened23]

Asus and sapphire here. My past few cards have been ati/amd based sapphire cards, and i've used asus motherboards for years and years....so I have no doubt their vidcards are high quality as well.

 

[bononos]

XFX used to be good. Now a lot of people are having problems with their 'lifetime' warranties not being honored, not to mention they use lower-quality components than reference at times to cut costs while not telling anyone about it. I think they're a dishonest company; therefore, I wouldn't recommend them (for now). In any case, there's few companies that have used these practices.

IIRC XFX used to be bad and widely reviled then they turned things around by offering 2x lifetime warranty (and poss. improving the quality of their products). So its bad->good->bad. Do you have examples of the lower quality components that were used? Like lower rated memory overclocked to ref. specs you mean?

How is the quality of Powercolor? I stayed away from Powercolor/PNY because they seemed to be the cheapest bare bones products and was worried about caps popping etc.

 

[soccerballtux]

I like Galaxy. They insist on diverging from the norm and trying their own thing, and have pretty good prices to boot.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

IIRC XFX used to be bad and widely reviled then they turned things around by offering 2x lifetime warranty (and poss. improving the quality of their products). So its bad->good->bad. Do you have examples of the lower quality components that were used? Like lower rated memory overclocked to ref. specs you mean?

How is the quality of Powercolor? I stayed away from Powercolor/PNY because they seemed to be the cheapest bare bones products and was worried about caps popping etc.

What I said earlier. They typically skimp out on the coolers and have used lower-quality capacitors in some products.

PowerColor is fairly standard, apart from that beasty 6870 X2. Their RMA and CS department seems to be okay, and they typically use good quality components. Same for HIS. PNY has some problems with their CS department and RMAs, but they don't skimp out on components at least. I'd move them to meh along the others I mentioned, but HIS and PowerColor are standard fare, which is to say good.

 

[chihlidog]

See...I dont know why, but I always had a negative impression of PowerColor. I have no personal experience to back that up, just a vibe. Interesting to hear a different take on it.

 

[bononos]

What I said earlier. They typically skimp out on the coolers and have used lower-quality capacitors in some products.

PowerColor is fairly standard, apart from that beasty 6870 X2. Their RMA and CS department seems to be okay, and they typically use good quality components. Same for HIS. PNY has some problems with their CS department and RMAs, but they don't skimp out on components at least. I'd move them to meh along the others I mentioned, but HIS and PowerColor are standard fare, which is to say good.

Thanks for the info.

What about Palit/Sapphire?