Worrying about buying a non-popular brand

[It's Not Lupus]

Should I be concerned about buying a video card from a not so popular brand, which happened to have better deals than popular brands?

I'm also wondering why the MSI AMD cards have no/low stock at retailers.

 

[KaRLiToS]

And which brand it that?

I bought two cards from Zotac because they were cheaper and I knew they were not the favorite brands. I had no issue at all with them and they could overclock very high.

• Zotac GTX 680 AMP Edition
• Zotac GTX 780 Reference

 

[tweakboy]

Zotac is a smaller company,, So the parts arent top notch. gb

 

[Magic Carpet]

Zotac's are fine, but their customer support is really bad. But that's to be expected with every major vendor, when you ask too technical questions. The moment I buy a card, that's when the relationship ends. It's best to buy things from a reputable place with good return/warranty policy. Dealing with RMAs direct, is a pain.

 

[el etro]

Zotac is a company owned by Sapphire, and also does very good cards too.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Zotac is a company owned by Sapphire, and also does very good cards too.

I didn't know that, do you have a link? Sapphire has had good support in the past so I don't know why Zotac would have poor support if this is true.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I didn't know that, do you have a link? Sapphire has had good support in the past so I don't know why Zotac would have poor support if this is true.

You can't expect good technical support from marketing people. Really. Only good for RMAs, which takes longer than sending back to the shop. (they don't expect, nor are trained to help you to do anything more complex than installing a driver and plugging a power cord).

 

[cmdrdredd]

Customer support isn't supposed to answer highly technical questions.

 

[el etro]

I didn't find on the net about the PcPartner group owner, the company site does not show Sapphire as a Daughter company, but most of web info says Zotac and Sapphire is from the same owner.

http://www.techpowerup.com/182893/palit-and-pc-partner-beat-asus-in-graphics-card-market-share.html

 

[Magic Carpet]

Customer support isn't supposed to answer highly technical questions.

They are selling technical things. They should be trained at least on the BIOS level of the "cakes" they are selling. I've spent way too much time solving trivial issues. And Zotac was special when they sent me a BIOS that did not have correct p-states and I had to edit them manually (after spending a few days on the phone/email) :thumbsdown:

But yeah, most are useless anyway, same with the mobo makers. If you can't fix it yourself, might as well not waste your time on CS at all. Again, if you need to RMA it's better to do to a shop you bought it from. Manufacturers don't give a damn about consumer support, just "buy another product" is their usual response. And more often than that, it is better.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Depends, I've had good luck getting stuff replaced from the manufacturer before. EVGA and Asus gave me no hassles.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Depends, I've had good luck getting stuff replaced from the manufacturer before. EVGA and Asus gave me no hassles.

It's good when you can get a replacement, but it takes time and patience. I usually get a refund and buy something else (hoping I won't need CS). Been mostly trouble-free with Asus and Gigabyte. MSI the worst.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Every manufacturer has it's share of reported bad service and RMA issues. I just don't expect customer service to know anything about firmwares or BIOS. For that I go contact someone on the forums. Especially so for motherboards. I don't know if it still applies but Asus and Gigabyte used to have reps over on xtremesystems that would assist in memory tweaking and getting stability.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Neither do I have high expectations but I always try, maybe today is my lucky day, you never know. When I go to my local car dealer there is always somebody that can answer my questions, don't mind paying for that. But with hardware, it's different. Don't really wanna go to forum A to fix my issues, having paid money to company X. They just don't care enough, simple as.

Oh well, at least Microsoft doesn't mind re-activating my Windows 8 copy every few months, ha.

 

[cmdrdredd]

At the car dealer you can talk to a repair tech. You call MSI and you'll get someone reading from a script lol.

 

[hunkeelin]

DO NOT. by anything from zotac. Take the 970 for example. THe zotact 970 keeps throttling down to 1075mhz while msi can handle 1500mhz rock solid with great temps. Trust me. DO NOT EVER EVER EVER by from zotac.

 

[garagisti]

Should I be concerned about buying a video card from a not so popular brand, which happened to have better deals than popular brands?

I'm also wondering why the MSI AMD cards have no/low stock at retailers.

HIS? Some people have rather mixed experiences... Their coolers used to be the bee's knees...

Given you mention AMD, some say, this is a good msi card... and price is pretty nice too.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127787
Ahem, a $30 rebate is there right now, bringing it to $320 in total.

Apologies if you were looking at something lower end, but share budgets, and people can help

 

[chubbyfatazn]

I didn't find on the net about the PcPartner group owner, the company site does not show Sapphire as a Daughter company, but most of web info says Zotac and Sapphire is from the same owner.

http://www.techpowerup.com/182893/palit-and-pc-partner-beat-asus-in-graphics-card-market-share.html

I don't think so. They just make the cards for Sapphire. They do own Zotac, however.

From a prospectus from PCPartner I found dated December 29, 2011:

Sapphire video graphics cards are solely based on AMD technology, whilst [PCPartner's] own brand video graphics cards are solely based on nVidia technology.

[PCPartner] owned 40% interest in Sapphire when it was incorporated in 2001... on 1 January 2008, [its] interest in Sapphire was diluted to 18.18%. On 19 August 2010, [its] interest in Sapphire was further diluted to 4.95%.

In 2005, [PCPartner] established the Zotac brand and began selling [to distributors]... in 2007.

[PCPartner] only uses nVidia GPUs in its [own] video graphics card products.

Sorry for getting off-topic. This thing is pretty damn interesting, there's loads of stuff in here about the business and operations side of the industry.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Got both a gtx650 and a 770 from Zotac,both have been flawless.

I don't know about their dinky small $329 970 but i think about anything else i would try out.

 

[Cerb]

Should I be concerned about buying a video card from a not so popular brand, which happened to have better deals than popular brands?

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on which brand.

I'm also wondering why the MSI AMD cards have no/low stock at retailers.

They are very popular.

DO NOT. by anything from zotac. Take the 970 for example. THe zotact 970 keeps throttling down to 1075mhz while msi can handle 1500mhz rock solid with great temps. Trust me. DO NOT EVER EVER EVER by from zotac.

Many cards will do that, even from EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, or others that also fancy OCing cards. AMD cards with weak coolers will do the same, just without the varying in-firmware power limits. Get the fancy card, rather than the cheapest one, if temp and/or power throttling bother you. If AMD doesn't change their reference cooler much for the 300 series, expect the same crap with their upcoming Radeons, depending on vendor and cooler.