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6950 - Any major difference between brands?

S

Stevarian

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 13, 2002
Messages
502
So after a lot of reading, I think I will order an HD 6950 2 GB card....Newegg has the HIS card for $259.99 after rebate and with free shipping. The XFX card is 279.99 after $10 rebate and they are charging $2.99 for shipping. The XFX card has 42 reviews and the HIS only has 4. Then there is an MSI for $274.99 after MIR with free shipping, and it has 9 reviews, and a Sapphire for same price as the HIS card, but with $2.99 shipping.

To me it looks like the HIS card has the best price, but it also has the fewest reviews. I thought all these cards were reference anyway? Is there any difference in the actual hardware? I know that XFX has the double warranty....but not sure it that is worth another $23....

Not sure if the smaller number of reviews is significant or not....Thanks in advance!

Steve
 
Stevarian said:
So after a lot of reading, I think I will order an HD 6950 2 GB card....Newegg has the HIS card for $259.99 after rebate and with free shipping. The XFX card is 279.99 after $10 rebate and they are charging $2.99 for shipping. The XFX card has 42 reviews and the HIS only has 4. Then there is an MSI for $274.99 after MIR with free shipping, and it has 9 reviews, and a Sapphire for same price as the HIS card, but with $2.99 shipping.

To me it looks like the HIS card has the best price, but it also has the fewest reviews. I thought all these cards were reference anyway? Is there any difference in the actual hardware? I know that XFX has the double warranty....but not sure it that is worth another $23....

Not sure if the smaller number of reviews is significant or not....Thanks in advance!

Steve
Click to expand...

double warranty IS worth the extra $23, resale value or anything, unless you really dont plan to sell this card at all. HIS is only 2 year warranty. I would pay more for the XFX
 
I went with the XFX, but if I had to choose again I would have gone with the cheapest option. All of the cards at this point are exactly the same. Nobody has customized any of them. As for a 2 year warranty, if the card makes it past the first month it will make it past 2 years. With most people buying cards at this level they will upgrade a couple times in the next 2 years anyways so its not a big deal regardless.
 
Damn they are going for that cheap now? That has to be the biggest bang for the buck in a while.
 
The ASUS is the best choice:
-comes with a 10mhz overclock
-aluminum shroud for better heat dissipation
-voltage tweaked
-excellent warranty tied to serial number

And, most importantly, it's the brand I went with :)
 
HAHA 10MHZ overclock is jack shit in this life time. Asus is a good brand granted but what a poor OC they did on that thing
 
More than a reference card doesn't mean you'll notice it. That said, the aluminum shroud is nice, since it obviously won't peel off due to heat, like the average sticker.
 
I was not dissing the card or anything but 10mhz come on. I know why they did this to confuse the average Consumer buy this card with 10mhz more at a higher cost & gain nothing lol
 
True it won't be noticeable, but hey an increase is an increase nonetheless. Of course that shouldn't be the reason to go with ASUS, the aluminum shroud and voltage tweak are better selling points. And ASUS is just a quality brand, I've never been let down by them.
 
Given the standard of the rest of the stuff Asus make, I wouldn't touch their 6950 with a bargepole, knowing that they've modified it. 10mhz is completely irrelevant, the 1% performance difference that will give is less than the margin of error every time you run a game.
 
Have to strongly disagree with you on that samuelmorris... Asus is rock solid. Very good company IMO. That said, the OP should go with whatever brand is the cheapest considering they're all reference models anyway. At the moment I believe both Sapphire and HIS have them for $260 after rebate.
 
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Don't really want to get into a debate on it, but any manufacturer that builds £160 motherboards with a design lifetime of 5 months is probably best avoiding :p
Gave Asus a fair shot, bought 5 of their products, at a total expenditure of about £490.
Minimum lifetime = 2 months
Maximum lifetime = 17 months
Mean lifetime = 7.2 months
I then chose to switch to gigabyte, whom I've bought 6 boards with. One was DOA (second PCIe slot fault, would have gone unnoticed to a single card user), the others, all faultless, despite being 3 years old now in 3 cases.
Oh, and I did try an Asus graphics card, not just a motherboard (and yes it was non-reference). That was the 2 months.
 
The reference cards (blower exhaust) pretty much no difference between them and falls to brand loyalty or warranty. If you can get a dual fan one, go for it as any extra cooling is helpful and keeps the noise down. Sapphire, Gigabyte, and XFX are all great brands. I'm not sure about Asus, but majority of reviews I see go toward those three brands.
 
Typically non-reference cards are noisier than their reference counterparts though you do see some lower-noise examples. For example, the stock HD3870 was around 22dB at load, whereas the Sapphire version was over 40dB, and more than 35dB at the desktop. Yet the Asus version was around 21dB at any load (did not have a fan controller, but I forced the fan speed down to 11dB level and that was still fine for load. Before anyone thinks that causes its premature demise, the temps never exceeded 68C load)

Meanwhile, XFX's dual fan 6850s and 6870s are particularly quiet, as are the gigabyte dual-fan examples. I can't comment on the other versions.
 
I bought that HIS HD6950 on sale + rebate and I have no complaints so far. I no longer have the horrible coil squeal my signature HD4850 had and the extra power was just a bonus.;) Like you said they're all reference so there isn't much to say other than warranty. As for that I don't expect to sell this card anytime soon since I upgrade so rarely. By the time I would sell it the warranty of a more expensive brand won't command any more price premium than I saved now.
 
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