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6870 - diff in mfg's / PCB size?

J

jamsomito

2[H]4U
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Aug 29, 2010
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I'm looking into picking up an HD 6870 to upgrade my crippled GeForce 9600 GSO in my most recent budget build. I found 4 of them on Newegg for ~$160, but I noticed some coolers look better than others and some PCB sizes are different. The specs for shader count, GPU speed, VRAM speed, and memory interface were all the same. Here's the one's I'm looking at:

Sapphire $150 shipped AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102948
MSI $160 shipped AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127545
XFX $160 shipped AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150561
XFX $162.56 shipped AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150521

The Sapphire and first listed XFX card have what appears to be a condensed PCB, whereas the MSI and second XFX have longer PCB's. Are the shorter PCB's indicative of crippling the cards specs, or equal performance with better power consumption? Are they simply "2nd rev's"?

Also, I'm looking for the quietest noise possible... I'm assuming coolers with 2 fans will be quieter than single fan units. Does anyone have any incite here either?

Thanks [H].
 
look for reviews on specific models. Sometimes there are roundups where they compare different brands. Look for the Mhz because sometimes some builders overclock the stock model.
 
Thanks, Echo. I guess I never thought to find specific reviews on each of these - I'll check it out.

The reason I was asking though is because all 4 of these cards have the exact same specs on Newegg's "Details" page. Face value they're all the same. I'll try to dig deeper.
 
I owned both revisions of the XFX, currently on the smaller one. It's louder than the two-fan design and has some strange quirk that is causing a lot of electrical static interference over my speakers, whereas the other one didn't.
 
As an audiophile who enters a psychotic rage over interference and static, thank you for the warning SonicTron.

I'm thinking they jammed the components too tightly together on the board, it makes my 5770 look huge in comparison.
 
Well, I ended up going with the MSI. I like to OC and I know MSI uses quality components. Plus, it was a couple bucks cheaper, came with a free game, and the cooler has been known to be pretty good too. I'm not saying the cooler on the XFX is bad, but I found one review that showed it was only 1-2C cooler than the single fan unit. The XFX warranty was hard to pass up, but the MSI has 3 year mfg warranty, which isn't bad. By then I may have a different pc anyway. I read some bad reviews on Sapphire's customer service, so I opted to pay a little extra for something that will be backed if something goes wrong. All in all, the performance of all the cards was nearly identical from what I could find.

Thanks, all, for the advice, it is very much appreciated.
 
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