7970 Brand Box Shots?? Which Brand do you prefer??

T

Toonie

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 5, 2006
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Any brand box shots yet for the 7970's??
Which brand do you prefer?? in terms of warranty etc..?
 
We have Asus and XFX 7970's in our vendor item database (I do purchasing for an IT company) but they are currently on 0 stock, obviously. I'm probably going to go with MSI, personally. I trust them the most on the customer service side, which I think is extremely important when you are on the cutting edge, buying products the day they launch. Sh*t inevitably happens.
 
I know that eVGA is best for nVidia cards but i'm undecided when it comes to the red team.

is HIS up in par with any other brand?
 
Kenjiwing said:
Are you all serious?

XFX is the best ati provider..
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That's highly debatable. XFX has the best warranty, but they are notorious for cutting corners with their PCB and cooler designs and have many times changed the design of a card while keeping the same part number.

I like the brands that have a 3 year warranty and don't care who owns it. 3 years is plenty of warranty for a video card and not having to register it and having to deal with transferring the registration is a bonus.
 
Parja said:
That's highly debatable. XFX has the best warranty, but they are notorious for cutting corners with their PCB and cooler designs and have many times changed the design of a card while keeping the same part number.
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But usually not with the first few batches, as they stick to reference?
 
Parja said:
That's highly debatable. XFX has the best warranty, but they are notorious for cutting corners with their PCB and cooler designs and have many times changed the design of a card while keeping the same part number.

I like the brands that have a 3 year warranty and don't care who owns it. 3 years is plenty of warranty for a video card and not having to register it and having to deal with transferring the registration is a bonus.
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XFX does change the part number, it's just that websites don't update fast enough so they get mixed in with other batches.

As far as brands.

HIS:
+Good Warranty
+Generally Cheaper
-Ugly Design and cheap non reference coolers
-Have died more often in my experience (2 out of 5)

XFX:
+Great Warranty
+Good Customer Support
+Nice Designs on reference coolers
+Decent non ref coolers.
-Non Reference PCBs are released too quickly
-Generally more expensive than other brands

MSI:
+Good Warranty
+Great Customer Support
+Awesome non-reference coolers
-Can also tend to be a bit pricey

Sapphire:
+Good Warranty
+Good Customer Support
+Decent non-ref coolers
-Ugly decals on most of them

ASUS
+Everything
-Cost

Gigabyte ??

Diamond/VisionTek ??
+Usually keep their reference stock longer than most
 
ASUS looks to be the one i'm leaning towards besides MSI / Sapphire.... sometimes i wish eVGA would jump on ATi's bandwagon..

Only box shots i see so far is:
Club3D-Radeon-HD-7970.jpg

pyramidstack.jpg
 
I always buy sapphire cards since x1950 personally.

Never had a single issue with them and they usally overclock well..
 
I may have been mistaken, but I thought I saw something about an 7970 and a 7970 XT. Anyone else see this?
 
omg this is better than porn.
I might have to swap out my 6970's
 
NickJames said:
-Ugly Design and cheap non reference coolers
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Disagree. From what I gather the HIS Ice Q line of non reference cooling designs are some of the best out there. And I think the packaging/marketing of these is fine. Excalibur is cool. :)
 
The Mac said:
I always buy sapphire cards since x1950 personally.

Never had a single issue with them and they usally overclock well..
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This. My last three ATi cards have been Sapphire, all worked great and their pricing is right where it needs to be.
 
Toonie said:
I know that eVGA is best for nVidia cards but i'm undecided when it comes to the red team.

is HIS up in par with any other brand?
Click to expand...

HIS is a last resort company in my opinion. they make good cards but their customer service and meh, their warranty sucks to top it off as well. with reference designs ASUS and XFX are the best in my opinion. once the custom PCB's and cooler designs come out then i'd go with either ASUS or MSI. i think XFX is still stretching its legs in the AMD/ATI market so it would be nice to see XFX come out with some real custom designed cards instead of just changing the PCB and keeping the reference designed cooler, but who knows what their real plan is.



Toonie said:
ASUS looks to be the one i'm leaning towards besides MSI / Sapphire.... sometimes i wish eVGA would jump on ATi's bandwagon..
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EVGA can't and won't. in essence they are Nvidia, without them Nvidia would disapear. at the same time their contract with Nvidia doesn't allow them to switch or even produce AMD cards and even if it did Nvidia wouldn't let that happen.

look at the fiasco that happened with XFX when they started making ATI/AMD cards and the fall out that caused.
 
I'm an XFX fan but could be swayed to MSI if the card in question is a TF. Not sure why people have bad feelings about XFX... Returned my gtx280 to them twice, 2nd time got a minor upgrade to a 5830. All reasonable and timely... What's not to like about a lifetime warranty? Also respect their choice to stop making NVIDIA after the death-by-drivers fiasco.
 
Last edited:
risqu3 said:
then whats the point of the fucking warranty?

If your product shits the bed you're going to get an inferior product that they cut corners on.
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Or it could be like any other computer component; prone to failures no one can do anything about except replace. You think non-XFX card never die?
 
MSI all the way. Best experience I have had with them, and less of a hassle reselling them because they go by serial and you don't have to worry about warranty.
 
Parja said:
That's highly debatable. XFX has the best warranty, but they are notorious for cutting corners with their PCB and cooler designs and have many times changed the design of a card while keeping the same part number.

I like the brands that have a 3 year warranty and don't care who owns it. 3 years is plenty of warranty for a video card and not having to register it and having to deal with transferring the registration is a bonus.
Click to expand...

XFX is the best for a reference card purchase that's only going to be kept 12-18 months then sold, and not going to be water-cooled with full-cover blocks.

I had my release 6970 start to artifact and the initial RMA came back as a revised PCB model, which obviously my waterblock didn't fit. It took a lot of bitching to finally get back a release reference card, I've stopped buying their cards after that for any of my own or client builds.

MSI cards are my choice now, Asus a close second (only because their RMA is worse when compared to MSI in Canada).

The worst supported cards that I'll never touch are anything by Diamond, Visiontek or Sapphire.
 
That's_Corporate said:
so basically XFX is for girls

got it
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I noted that because revised PCB's almost never allow full-cover water-blocks of a different PCB revision to be used, especially not with XFX. It has nothing to do with being [H] enough to watercool or any other 'title' crap you seem to be trying to shit the thread up with.
 
I bought my dad a XFX 4580 1GB. It basically was the mobile 4850 chipset. Was fun times getting the drivers updated on that, it would BSOD like crazy if you went above 11.70. After a MONTH with XFX tech support (It would be 3 days between replies on the ticket). They finally released a BIOS upgrade for it so I could update the video drivers and play BF3. Because of that experience I will never buy an XFX again. Granted, in the end it all worked out, but it should not have taken so long. I would have been pissed if that was my main computer at home and unable to play a new game on it that I bought because of something like that.
 
i have 2 his iceq turbo 6970s and they are fantastic cards and made very well. they are much better than the XFX 6970 ref card i had originally which was loud and ran at 90c
i will not buy XFX ever again

HIS cards run around 75c and the other card runs at 56c and they are overclocked at the factory at 900mhz core and 1400mhz ram.

ASUS i think makes the best quality cards but HIS is an awesome brand for not alot of money. highly recommend HIS video cards !!!
 
I've only ever owned a Sapphire-branded Radeon card since the Radeon 3870, and only one MSI. I have not had any issues with the card themselves from Sapphire, so most likely I will get a 7970 from them.

The only non-branded Radeon card I've owned was the Radeon 9700 Pro. That was branded by ATI and no other manufacturer. That was such a wonderful card.
 
octoberasian said:
I've only ever owned a Sapphire-branded Radeon card since the Radeon 3870, and only one MSI. I have not had any issues with the card themselves from Sapphire, so most likely I will get a 7970 from them.

The only non-branded Radeon card I've owned was the Radeon 9700 Pro. That was branded by ATI and no other manufacturer. That was such a wonderful card.
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i had one of those too...man that thing rocked!
 
Radeon 9700 Pro was the best card during its time..... I remember playing BF1942 on my 21" Sony CRT with AA on.... that was pure joy back then :cool:
 
Toonie said:
Radeon 9700 Pro was the best card during its time..... I remember playing BF1942 on my 21" Sony CRT with AA on.... that was pure joy back then :cool:
Click to expand...

Here's a blast from the past: http://www.guru3d.com/review/ati/radeon9700pro/

I've had the Radeon 9700 Pro up until some time after EVE Online Trinity was released. Yup, I've had it for a good five years. I've had it paired with an Athlon XP 2600+ CPU. Then again, I only played at max resolution of 1280x1024 on a 17-inch CRT monitor. It was a very robust card, and one of the best cards that came from ATI before AMD bought them. After the stock fan failed to spin up and the video card wouldn't stay on stably enough due to overheating, I strapped on an 80 mm case fan onto it. The card STILL worked after that. It was also the only video card I did overclock, and with an 80 mm case fan on it, it stayed relatively cool.

I ended up getting a Sapphire Radeon 3870 a year after EVE Online Trinity was released which was paired with an Athlon64 X2 5000+.

Seeing that I've kept the Sapphire 3870 up until 2009 and replaced it with an MSI 5770 (and an AMD Phenom II X4 CPU and new board), and later on a Sapphire 6950, I'll probably will be sticking with Sapphire seeing they've been pretty good to me in my computer systems over the years.
 
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