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4850 Build Quality and Manufacturing

B

boltz man

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 22, 2008
Messages
68
I was wondering about quality across various brands of 4850s. Does one company/plant manufacture all the pcbs letting each brand choose their cooling solution, etc?

I'm just trying to get a handle on if there's any reason to be worry about card brand at all - especially if you're considering putting on your own vga cooling.

I've noticed that there are several different "builds" on newegg. There's the red pcb which I understand to be the reference design. Are these all made by the same company?

There's also a blue pcb which seems to differ from the reference design in layout and cooling.

Then there's the xfx card which is probably just the reference card with a black pcb.

Anybody keep tabs on this sort of stuff? Is there a website that anyone can point me to?
 
I can't answer most of those questions, but I can tell you the XFX 4850 is most definitely not the reference design.
 
There was a previous post in this forum but it had no definitive answers. People seemed to think sapphire was making all the reference boards except the ones visiontek is making in canada.

How do you know the xfx board isn't the ref design?
 
Draken 290: Oh, I know it's not the reference cooler. I'm talking about the board itself.

Are all 4850 pcbs manufactured the same using the same components and same layout? And are there multiple manufactures making these boards?

There's no chance that every single card is physically manufactured in house by each respective brand. So who's getting their pcbs from where?

I was simply observing the color/layout of pcbs. There seem to be three types red, blue, and black. I read somewhere that the blue boards have a different layout then the red boards. I know nothing about the xfx card besides it's black and has a non reference cooler.
 
I understand, but what makes you say the board itself isn't just the reference layout with a different color pcb?
 
boltz man said:
I understand, but what makes you say the board itself isn't just the reference layout with a different color pcb?
Click to expand...
Compare the back of the card with the back of a reference card and you'll see a significant difference.
You can do this with any of the models to see what's been changed.

NewEgg has pictures of all the cards' backs, you have to go to the photo gallery for each card to find the picture though.

You might notice they all have different layouts these days, I think ATI let their partners run loose with the cards, it seems like they all took them in a different direction.
 
I'm just curious about the manufacturing aspect of video cards. There's so much information about parts that the end user doesn't get to know about. Much like with LCD panels, the consumer has a really tough time finding out just exactly what they're getting. Another example is my WD3200AAKS which turned out to be a different model despite the exact same model designation.
 
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