What is your favorite brand of Video card? (non-OEM)

Gamer X

Limp Gawd
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Jul 5, 2019
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I am asking about favorite aftermarket (non-OEM) card maker.

Gigabyte..?
MSI..?
ASUS..?
Sapphire..?
Power Color..?
etc..?

When choosing any nvidia card, innately chose EVGA. I must have 4 or 5 EVGA cards laying around, but EVGA is exclusive to Nvidia. I've been looking at Vega64 reviews & at the different manufacturers approach to cooling these AIO are using. Seen what reviews have said about each manufacturers approach, but what say you?



I am asking/interested, because I plan on building a small frag box around AMD's new x570 and will be using the new Navi card in this build. TwinFrozrs stood out, but I need as much cooling as I can afford, to push reliability and longevity. I am almost certain I want to go AIO liquid cooling at this point for ease of installation and quietness. And might be easier in a small case, bcz I am thinking of going m-ATX, or even smaller.
 
I like the MSI cards personally. I've had good luck with them. I haven't had such good luck with Sapphire (RMA issues). I have a Powercolor Red Dragon Vega 56 that works great.
 
Yeah, I have been eyeing their ROG x570 boards this whole week. Never had any experience with their cards.
 
Used to be the MSI Lightning series. Now they are the trios which are still great cards but not as good looking. I'd buy EVGA for GPUs due to better warranty service right now.
 
It all depends on the price to me. I am not brand loyal anymore. Although, I used to like Diamond & Sapphire as my go to.
 
If I were to go Nvidia it would probably be EVGA. For AMD card MSI would be my choice. Can say my RX 480 gaming X has been excellent. ASUS would be close second.
 
EVGA for still having the best policies consumer experience. Like the others I will buy other brands sometimes but I fully expect that if anything goes wrong with the others (Asus, Gigabyte or MSI) I’m screwed.
 
i personally have zero experience with them, but sapphire seems to be the go to brand in the amd circles. Whether their RMA service is great or not, no clue
 
EVGA for air, MSI Seahawk for water. On top-end cards. Anything else, whatever works.
 
Msi, evga and gigabyte. Ive had really good luck with all of them. Wouldnt touch an asus if it was free. Well maybe if it was free :D ive had too many really bad experiences with their customer service over the years.
 
Zotac, followed by gigabyte.

I actually really like Galax too. I've never had trouble with their boards - they just work.
 
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EVGA, MSI, XFX, PNY have all been problem free to me.

PNY is the fav tho, being a East Coast company in NJ. As a former Brooklyn resident and still a New Yorker at heart, I gotta give a little support to a company that was founded in Brooklyn.
 
I've stuck with MSI cards as much as possible. I love the cooling solutions on their cards.
 
I'm using a Zotac right now (due to getting a good deal) and it works fine so far, but normally I stick with either EVGA or sometimes OEM (Nvidia = Titan Xp / AMD Radeon VII) cards.
 
i personally have zero experience with them, but sapphire seems to be the go to brand in the amd circles. Whether their RMA service is great or not, no clue

It's terrible. I had a bad 7950 and got the run around. I sent a card in for a bad fan (worked otherwise), they sent me a non-working card, I sent that back, and they sent me another non-working card. I ended up tearing it apart myself, repasting the HSF and then it worked fine. I shouldn't have to fix my own cards when I RMA them.
 
AMD founders referencing edition, if not ASUS or whoever has the closest layout to ref for compatibility.
 
My beloved R9 Fury Nitro (Sapphire card) is still my fave. Thing was so massive, quiet, and cool.

Wish Sapphire got to make a VII version, but now that VII appears to be on EOL that probably won't be happening.
 
I like to try all brands, but EVGA (for Nvidia) and Sapphire (for AMD) are probably my favorites.
 
I'm not brand loyal but I've got preferences. They take a back seat to performance and aesthetics though.

So vrm quality, hs/f quality, display outputs, noise level, aesthetics.
 
BFG Tech!
That was a great company early on but suffered some serious issues later. Their 7800gs AGP cards were failure prone and the company handled it badly. Took four returns for me to get a working one. Couple of those were obviously poor repair attempts (solder flux mess) that just went right back out the door. Above said, when I did finially get a good card it has performed flawlessly for over 13 years. Good because it cost me near $100 extra from all the return fees and insurance because BFG and NewEgg kept passing the buck. After nearly a year I gave up. (2007 thread). Rant over. ;)
 
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I've never had a video card fail on me, and I've been switching things up pretty regularly.

Oveer th e last fifteen years I've been using XFX, Sapphire, Sparkle, EVGA, Asus, Zotac.Each has made a quality card.

I think the more important thing is to research whether the card has a lot of DOAs on sites like Newegg, and either avoid those , or wait till they're on deep discount.

I tend to avoid Powercolorr, and Gigabyte, just because of doing my research, and I think it's saved me from ever having a bad card.
 
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XFX actually (or used to) has a decent Lifetime Warranty when you buy through Breast Buy. Supposedly you just bring in the card and they'll replace it.
 
XFX actually (or used to) has a decent Lifetime Warranty when you buy through Breast Buy. Supposedly you just bring in the card and they'll replace it.

Hmmmmmmm, I bought my XFX RX570 through BB, I will have to remember that, if I need too.
 
I'm sure I've ran the entire range of brands since the start of the Red and Green era and I don't think I really favor a certain brand, but I do avoid all Gigabyte products from my own experience. Had issues with Powercolor and MSI here and there but all things Gigabyte ended up in frustration/trash.
 
Sapphire! I used to like XFX but their cards from the RX580 and up have been terrible.

So much this. Out of all the video cards I have owned, over half of them have been Sapphires and I've had no issues with any of them. I had an XFX R9 290x that was fine so I went with XFX again when I upgraded to an RX 580 and it had a dead displayport when it arrived. I replaced it with a Sapphire RX 580.
 
It's terrible. I had a bad 7950 and got the run around. I sent a card in for a bad fan (worked otherwise), they sent me a non-working card, I sent that back, and they sent me another non-working card. I ended up tearing it apart myself, repasting the HSF and then it worked fine. I shouldn't have to fix my own cards when I RMA them.

Thats unfortunate. Most threads including this one, there seem to be a vocal majority in support of them hence my recommendation. Wonder if anyone with experience with their current customer support has handled similar situations, seeing that now days (speculation of course) if your RMAing a non RDNA card, its basically a repaired miner card.
 
I mostly like Asus Strix's. I get performance numbers on air fairly close to those others get on liquid, just noisier. Not a fan of the extra costs and greatly saddened by all stories of bad experiences others have had with their customer support, or lack there of. I've had two gens of Gigabyte G1's and those performed exceedingly well. With the RTX's I've kept a close eye on the MSI Trio's, the Trio 2080TI was an extremely close 2nd choice for me.
 
I have 4 evga cards and could not be happier.260,275,660,and a 970.i have a amd based card from xfx at the moment.when i by again it will probably be from evga.
 
EVGA is the most consumer friendly, in my opinion, and the community engagement is awesome. But I think ASUS puts out a superior product.
 
I really don't have a favorite.
Over the years I've had cards from several brands

Creative Labs (yes, they made video cards a long time ago)
Diamond Multimedia (ditto...)
MSI
EVGA
PNY
BFG
Power Color
Saphire
Gigabyte

Never owned Asus or Zotac video cards.
 
eVGA, XFX, Sapphire, and Gigabyte has always been top-notch as far as customer service. Seasonic gets a mention too for their PSUs and Samsung for their monitor services. Asus is literally the only one that constantly gives me problems with RMAs. (Sending back defective cards without testing multiple times)
 
In the last 20 years, I've had Asus, EVGA, Gainward, MSI, PNY, Sapphire, Visiontek, and XFX. I've never had a single issue with any one of these. These days I stick to EVGA for Nvidia and XFX for AMD though - just personal preference.
 
I am mulling over x570 mobos too... depending, I might just get whatever brand GPU, that I get for my mobo (Asus Hero?)

Like I have said, I've owned EVGA for many years, and my ATi cards were always MSI. But these new Navi cards seem to like liquid cooling. So I guess this thread is a tad premature, because AIBs are still a few weeks away from releasing their Navi GPU solutions.
 
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