ATI 5970 Reference Card?

T

The Cobra

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jun 19, 2003
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Hi Folks,

A friend of mine offered to sell me his ATI 5970 reference card. He is offering it for $700. He claims that this card is better then the cards that are released from companies like Sapphire, XFX, Asus and others. He also claims that since this is a ref card from ATI, it is built from better silicon then the cards that are released.

Is this true? Is this a good deal? Am I just wasting my time?

Opinions please!!!

Thx!!!
 
All the 5970s that are on the market are reference cards including those made by XFX, Asus, etc...
 
Not really, AFAIK ASUS and Gigabyte made some changes to the PCB - reference wb don't work well on those.
 
Its engineered directly from AMD/ATI. That why I am holding off on buying this card. The other direction for me to go is to just get another Sapphire card and just crossfire that way.
 
i dont know much about ati warranty but if i had 700 bucks i would go with an xfx, asus sapphire. plus for 700 bucks you can get a new card rather then used.
 
there is probably no warranty on it, so $700 is outrageous. I have one of these "reference" cards, different fan setup, without the ports on the back
 
The other thing is that he won't tell me where he got the card from. If he did get it from ATI, prolly got it for free. SO he is just making bank off this card. With no warranty and other info, I will prolly just pass on the card and order one from ebay for around $380.
 
The Cobra said:
The other thing is that he won't tell me where he got the card from. If he did get it from ATI, prolly got it for free. SO he is just making bank off this card. With no warranty and other info, I will prolly just pass on the card and order one from ebay for around $380.
Click to expand...

$380? what dream land are you living in =)
offer him a lower price since there is no warranty :D
 
The Cobra said:
Hi Folks,

A friend of mine offered to sell me his ATI 5970 reference card. He is offering it for $700. He claims that this card is better then the cards that are released from companies like Sapphire, XFX, Asus and others. He also claims that since this is a ref card from ATI, it is built from better silicon then the cards that are released.

Is this true? Is this a good deal? Am I just wasting my time?

Opinions please!!!

Thx!!!
Click to expand...
700 may be a little steep for no warranty.I would hate to buy one and it craps out in a few days.
Send me a PM if your interest in a Sapphire 5970OC card.Getting rid of my ATI cards anyway.
 
at most i wouldnt offer anything above MSRP.. if it really is from ATI then its mostly likely an engineering sample and i sure as hell wouldnt offer MSRP on it.. if it is an ES model i wouldnt offer anything over 400 for it..
 
The Cobra said:
Hi Folks,

A friend of mine offered to sell me his ATI 5970 reference card. He is offering it for $700. He claims that this card is better then the cards that are released from companies like Sapphire, XFX, Asus and others. He also claims that since this is a ref card from ATI, it is built from better silicon then the cards that are released.

Is this true? Is this a good deal? Am I just wasting my time?

Opinions please!!!

Thx!!!
Click to expand...

Tell your friend his logic sucks. If the card is just a reference and not intended for consumer hands, then it would logically have WORSE silicon than the real cards. Why waste a good chip on something that isn't going to be used?

That said, it is likely indistinguishable (quality wise) from any OEM card - they are all made by one company anyway. The major difference between OEMs is warranty and non-reference designs (which are often more desirable than reference cards)
 
I've had cards direct from ATI before and they were all excellent but this was in the day when they didn't have that many add in board partners and ATI also let me RMA to them in Canada which is why I loved them as I am also in Canada.
 
The reference boards from AMD are no different in the quality of the parts, even if they were it wouldn't really matter, all the 5xxx cards have quite a lot of overclocking headroom on top of their stock values to begin with.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
The reference boards from AMD are no different in the quality of the parts, even if they were it wouldn't really matter, all the 5xxx cards have quite a lot of overclocking headroom on top of their stock values to begin with.
Click to expand...

I work with a former pm from ATI, he told me the Reference cards / ES were actually built on better, and later on , they would work out ways to make them as cheap as possible
 
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