ATI Cards

[Bradtechonline]

Which do you prefer and why? I've read in some posts where some companies put better coolers on their cards. I have a Sapphire, and I'm not satisfied with the cooling on the card myself, just kind of curious which of the other companies I may look at going with in the future if I decide to stay AMD/ATI.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

my last x1900xt was the ati reference card. i just thought it was better to have one made by ati. (IS it made by ati?)

i've heard good things about sapphire, asus (bigger bundle), and HIS. i wouldn't hesitate buying from any of those vendors.

 

[CP5670]

The cards themselves are pretty much identical and are most likely made by the same manufacturer. You might as well get whichever one is cheapest, although a few have better coolers. As for support and warranties, Sapphire and HIS are supposed to be quite bad from other people's experiences here, although I don't know much about the other companies.

 

[konakona]

the only thing I know about sapphire is how horrible their rebate scam is according to many who got swindled their money out of.

 

[bryanW1995]

I ordered a sapphire 1950xt from newegg in july. I'd be worried about my rebate right now but I made triple-sure to dot all my i's and cross my t's when mailing it in. ILYK if I have problems getting it.

 

[fern420]

heres my sapphire horror story

i was a hd2900xt CROSSFIRE sapphire user up until a week ago, ive been a loyal ati fan for over 4 years. got the cards on release day, may 14th and one of them died 2 weeks ago, about 4 months worth of use and it took a dump, started to progressively go bad, i thought it was my monitor so i wasted all bunch of money on a new monitor to only realize it was one of the cards craping out slowly.

i had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get a RMA number, sapphire uses a 3rd party repair company to handle their RMA's, go figure. the third party company wanted a $15 check to cover, "handling" for the card on top of the shipping cost to get a defective product to them so about $25 on my end to get a defective piece of equipment replaced.

regardless, their piss poor rma procedure and just way to many ati driver issues over the years put me over the top. i ordered two 88000gtx cards and a sli mobo last week and haven't looked back. ebayed the 2900 i had here and couldnt even get $270 bucks for it, barley 4 months old!

the driver support with games is like night and day with nvidia compared to what i dealt with for ati through the years, constantly having texture/graphical problems or small glitches, just dealing with them when i didnt have to.

i would strongly discourage anyone from buying sapphire just because of their RMA policy and ati for their sheer lack of support for most games. i learned the hard way, it took me 4 years but that nvidia logo that appears while loading a game just isnt for looks.

 

[jmmtn4aj]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
my last x1900xt was the ati reference card. i just thought it was better to have one made by ati. (IS it made by ati?)

i've heard good things about sapphire, asus (bigger bundle), and HIS. i wouldn't hesitate buying from any of those vendors.

IIRC 'ATI' cards were/are made by Sapphire.. or PowerColor, can't remember

 

[Bateluer]

My 9600Pro was a Sapphire, never had a problem with it, but I also never had to deal with Sapphire.

My old X1900XT was a Diamond. It served well for over a year until I replaced it with Diamond 2900XT. The 1900XT did have to go back to Diamond because it started artifacting, however, it was at the limits of its warranty. After the card is outside of Diamond's warranty, the warranty is handled by a company called Best Data. They wanted a 9 dollar check for the RMA, however, they did send an equivalent replacement card.

The 2900XT hasn't given me any problems, except for the slightly bent metal slot covers on the card itself. I don't think these were the result of anything caused by Diamond, more likely Newegg or shipping. In either case, I bent them back and installed the card without issue.

 

[TMoney468]

I second fern420's view on Sapphire. I had a Sapphire x1950pro when it first came out and the card never worked right from day 1. It eventually got to the point where I couldn't even start a game or run a benchmarking program without my computer rebooting and giving a black screen. I posted over on the Sapphire forums, and the "moderator" there blatantly said that the card wasn't at fault, that it was my power supply (Antec NeoHE 550 watt, not the best but still OK). Needless to say I was going to get an RMA when I found they charged $15 plus shipping to get a RMA, plus I would be without my computer for about 2 weeks because of not having a video card. Thank god I found the box the card came in because I RMA'd with Newegg instead.

This is just a FYI but Sapphire is a Chinese company, and had I known their RMA practices and that they were a Chinese company (with all of the current Chinese-related recalls) I would have stayed away.

 

[Bradtechonline]

Thanks for the input guys, I've never been really happy with my x1950xt Sapphire either. I've had problems with it overheating 89c seems to be the breaking point before the fan kicks in. This was really my first ATI card I bought for myself. I've been using an AMD/Nvidia setup since my Thunderbird 1.4 when I jumped into the AMD camp. I'm honestly not impressed with the warranties, and cooling solutions on these ATI cards. I guess since so many people buy aftermarket solutions for cooling now they just cheap out on the stock cooling anymore.