ATI-based brands to avoid?

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Sanitard

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It seems every time I've gone to buy a new video card, nVidia has been the 'best' choice- but this time ATI seems to be the way to go (and I'm more than happy to fund nVidia's once-Canadian competition!). I'm used to dealing with the usual brands for nVidia cards (and happen to be a BFG fan myself) but haven't paid attention to who's selling ATI cards for a long time.

So- the purpose of this thread is to discuss, if any, which brands should be avoided when it comes to ATI cards. Here's a short list to start (feel free to add/discuss others, of course):

Diamond, HIS, Palit, Powercolor, Sapphire, Visiontek

a) any negative experiences with a brand?
b) any positive experiences that make it worth buying one brand over others?

Cheers!
 
ATI brands I (personally) refuse to buy anymore:
Sapphire, Diamond, HIS.

Bad warranty, bad warranty, bad product.
 
They are all about the same, none of them compare to evga/bfg/xfx, but shy away from sapphire and powercolor, the others are ok. ATI branded cards are probably the best for warrenty purposes etc.
 
If you buy a Diamond with a rebate don't expect to ever see the check. I prefer Visiontek because of the lifetime warranty.
 
UtopiA said:
ATI brands I (personally) refuse to buy anymore:
Sapphire, Diamond, HIS.

Bad warranty, bad warranty, bad product.
Click to expand...

that means you won't be buying any ATi cards since Sapphire makes damned near all of them

I installed my VisionTek 4870 last night and this is what gets reported under CP and 3Dmark

Manufacturer ATI Technologies
 
Is that means all these brands are just responsible for the sticker and the packaging?
 
I will buy most card brands but Sapphire definitely not, avoid like the plague.
 
when did sapphire get bad? they were the best in the 9000 series.
 
The problem starts if you need technical support.
Their support forum admin as a goading moron that bans anyone who feels they should stand their ground against Sapphires dodgy support practices.
They seem to think it correct to replace faulty cards with downgrades when the card is no longer available.
Keep your eye out for other threads about Sapphires tech support.
 
lol, ATi's AIBs aren't good compared to nvidia's, that sapphire forum is a joke!
 
Don't deal with sapphire, all sapphire cards I've had failed prematurely.

Sapphire then refused to honor the warranty, in one case even trying to claim that that the card(with clearly identifying sapphire logos) was not made by them.

Bad stuff.
 
I bought a x1800xt sapphire card, I just never dealt with the warranty so I guess I got lucky.

I read through the companies warranties and Visiontek seems like they would be my next vendor for an ATi card. HIS seems pretty decent too.
 
Sojuuk said:
when did sapphire get bad? they were the best in the 9000 series.
Click to expand...

They were the only real option during that period of time. I actually had both a 8500 and then 9800 from Sapphire, but even then, their support was very poor. Powercolor, HIS, and Visiontek have emerged since then. My understanding is that with AMD aquiring ATI and Visiontek the ATI licensing to create ATI-Brand cards, that Sapphire is no longer their biggest brand, even if it still seems so.
 
HIS is probably the best bet right now. Great costumer support and great warranty.
 
Didn't ATI make their own cards a long time ago? I swear my old 9800Pro was from ATI.
 
They did, up until AMD bought them. Most of these were created by Sapphire though, with the ATI brand logo.
 
skyghene said:
If you buy a Diamond with a rebate don't expect to ever see the check. I prefer Visiontek because of the lifetime warranty.
Click to expand...
DiamondMM got bought out by the place that owns geeks.com. Their rebates get paid now, but that doesn't help if you bought a card under the old ownership. ;)

VisionTek has always had slow rebates that you need to follow up on. My last rebate from them took over 16 weeks.

I never had quality problems with either of those brands and i've bought several ATI cards from each going back to the Radeon 8500 days.

The only bad ATI cards I have bought were Sapphire branded. They ship some pretty marginal stuff and I won't buy anything from that company anymore.
 
Diamond has been good to me at least. I have a Diamond 4870, came in a nice slick black box and has a clean red and black ATI Radeon sticker on the card, no crazy looking characters.
 
next-Jin said:
Didn't ATI make their own cards a long time ago? I swear my old 9800Pro was from ATI.
Click to expand...
Yep. Same here. =]

Had positive experiences with: ATI 9800 Pro, Sapphire 9000 Pro
Had negative experiences with: Asus x1950pro, Powercolor HD3870
Just bought: Visiontek HD4850
 
Saphire tech support is pretty shitty. Other than that, I can't single out any other companies.
 
I have a Sapphire 1950GT, I had to RMA is a bit ago... they RMA'd it fine, but they charge you $15 + shipping. But reading other threads about Sapphire (and having to deal with Sapphire's own support/forums) I would not recommend (or personally buy) a Sapphire product again.
 
in the time of 1 month i had sapphire x800xl, 1950pro, 1950xt all die or go bad on me. i swore off ati/sapphire products since. but these 4870s made me take that back and i ordered a sapphire yet again. after reading this post im kinda scared now. seems im not the only 1
 
oMek said:
in the time of 1 month i had sapphire x800xl, 1950pro, 1950xt all die or go bad on me. i swore off ati/sapphire products since. but these 4870s made me take that back and i ordered a sapphire yet again. after reading this post im kinda scared now. seems im not the only 1
Click to expand...

Agreed- I'm not so sure about Sapphire cards. Back when ATI was it's own company, I got the impression that the Sapphire brand is where ATI sold its less-than-stellar cards. Even though Sapphire made the majority of ATI cards, I think they may have saved the best chips for ATI branding. Who knows what it's like now...

So- I'll probably avoid Sapphire. I guess you can't get a straight-up ATI card anymore?
 
I've had positive experience with Visiontek and HIS cards, and not-so-positive ones with Sapphire FWIW. The only Powercolor card I owned worked fine, but their support left a bad taste in my mouth. I've only owned ATI cards for the last 10+ years so I can't compare with any of the nVidia AIBs.
 
Sanitard said:
Agreed- I'm not so sure about Sapphire cards. Back when ATI was it's own company, I got the impression that the Sapphire brand is where ATI sold its less-than-stellar cards. Even though Sapphire made the majority of ATI cards, I think they may have saved the best chips for ATI branding. Who knows what it's like now...

So- I'll probably avoid Sapphire. I guess you can't get a straight-up ATI card anymore?
Click to expand...

You can get one actually if you order from their website I believe (could be wrong, but I believe the new MAC / PC 3870 is strickly from ATi).

As for Sapphire, my friends and family use them a lot. I have never heard a single complain. I have access to 4 systems with sapphire cards - never ran into a problems. In my house there are: 9600 pro, 9800 pro, x300 se, x800 pro, x1300, x1650 pro, 1950xt 512 edition.

All in service. All Sapphire. No problems. I am picking up either a 4850 or 4870 in a week or so from either Sapphire or Visiontek.
 
i had a sapphire card before but the ram didn't run at 1600mhz like it was supposed too (1400mhz). it produced artifcats if i tried to run it at the right speed. never again. visiontek ftw!
 
MSI also sells ATI cards and in my experience have pretty good service. I've never had any issues with their video cards (I've only bought 2 though) but I have had to RMA a couple motherboards that were both at least 2 years old and it was incredibly easy. In both cases I told them what was wrong they gave me an RMA number and a couple weeks later I had a working MOBO.

ASUS also has very good customer service in my experience so once they get their 4000 models out they would be a very safe bet as well.
 
People seem to dislike Sapphire just because one employee posted some rude comments and pulled a hacked BIOS. Allthough it's not right to collectively punish customers, I'm sure something must have triggered that reaction. Besides, not many other companies would offer hacked BIOSes from their own support forums (or even have support forums in the first place).

As long as you don't need to RMA the card or anything else unexpected happens, it doesn't matter which brand you choose as the cards are identical. When it comes to customer service and warranty, everyone will have a different experience. When I contacted Gigabyte about the fan being stuck at 100% on my 8800GT, it took them one week to reply and they told me to use RivaTuner. I had already googled and found out that the fan at 100% was due to the way they designed the PCB and no software can fix it..

I've never had to RMA an ATI or Nvidia card so I have no experience with that. You shouldn't have to pay the shipping yourself, though. It's their fault if the product fails when under warranty.
 
At least ATI cards don't come factory overclocked and then fry when you try to run them. EVGA has a track record of doing that. I had to go through two RMA's over factory overclocked EVGA 7900GT's. In the end they send me 7950GX2 which caused further issues on my mb. EVGA never checked to make sure 7950GX2 is compatible with my mb or if I even wanted one. I had already spent well over $60.00 on shipping back cards to them from Canada to the U.S. At that point I gave up and traded it to a friend. Now I have two 8800GT and made sure neither is factory overclocked.
 
I thought Visiontek made ATI cards, not Sapphire? (in terms of actual manufacturer)
 
I read elsewhere that VisionTek is now (technically) the "Made By ATI" brand.
 
Avoid EVGA as much as possible!
It is impossible to install successfully the Catalyst drivers with any of their cards!
 
VisionTek only mentions that they're a "premium retail partner", which is probably what the other brands are as well.

I've heard a few horror stories about EVGA- I'm leaning toward HIS and VisionTek at the moment (partly because they seem to be decent brands, and partly because they're in stock at NCIX)
 
VisionTek offers a Limited Lifetime Warranty for most of their video cards. They support is easy to contact and fast to reply. It is also the only partner ATI trusts to distribute cards under the ATI name.

In the past I've bought Sapphire cards cuz they were cheaper (after rebates I never got), but they always seemed to fail 2-4 months after their 1 year warranty. My old VisionTek 9800 is still running strong and now my two HD 4870 quietly running in my case.
 
Wasn't Sapphire the previous manufacturer that made the "built by ATI" cards? I think they were at one time.
 
Nenu said:
This thread isnt about you and your problems.
Just because you had a bad time with NVidia and are pissed nobody backed you up, it doesnt give you the right to come here flaming.

You can catch a break quite easily by keeping out of this thread.
Click to expand...

But he's quite right. He's just one dick on a largely ignored forum (pretty common to do that among manufacturers). Hell, XFX closed their forums two years ago, and I still bought cards from them!

One thing I'm very curious about is the fact that Sapphire warranty is now handled by the OEM that sold the card. This means that FX Videocards is handling my 2-year warranty, and their support so-far has been superb. Has Sapphire's warranty always been handled this way?

I expect if anything ever happened to my card that I would not be subjected to bullshit.
 
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