ATI-based brands to avoid?

I have a Sapphire X1650 XT that overheats. I think it is just a bad reference design combined with a bad cooler and not necessarily a defective card. I was trying to find warranty information and found that their warranty is handled by the company that sold you the card (newegg).

I decided to see what the warranty was on my new Asus 4850 and found that their warranty is also through the place of purchase.

Has anybody with a card over a year old try to get a replacement from newegg? I imagine having problems with this.
 
I dont like sapphire

HIS is just "meh"

Dont know much about asus

Heard visiontek is good

Powercolor IMO is quite good as well.
 
Just a little heads up, I think right now most if not all of the 4850/4870 come from the same plant, if you look at all the naked shots of them, they all have the same parts (caps and all), so in reality any 4850/4870 you get right now would be the same.
 
Here's a naked shot of the visiontek 4850:

toplessrk2.jpg


powercolor:

front.jpg


MSI:

DSC09720.jpg


Absolutely zero difference.

Until asus or powercolor or whomever else comes up with a non-reference design to these cards, they are all the same regardless of which brand you choose from.
 
UtopiA said:
I believe we already clarified it's down to warranty discussion...
Click to expand...

YES PEOPLE, this is a warranty discussion. I don't know why people jump in talking about reference cards and other stuff like coming from the same plant etc etc etc...

Sapphire is known for their crappy service.

My Asus X1900XT was dying on me, sent it to them on Monday, delivered on Wednesday. Repaired/Replaced on Thursday. Status on ready for shipment. If it wasn't July 4th I would have the replacement in my hands on Monday, but it will go out Monday and I should get it sometimes next week. Now that's fast!
 
This is probably an isolated incident, but I didn't have a very good experience with my HIS X1950 Pro IceQ. It came with a factory overclock, but it was not stable at that speed, so I had to drop it down to reference stock speed. Then within a year, the fan on the cooler started making a loud noise. It sounded like the bearings were going out. The only saving grace is that NewEgg handles the warranty if it's still within the warranty period. Since it was discontinued, I got credit for it, which I used to buy a Visiontek 3870, and still made $10 from the credit :D. I've had no problems with the Visiontek so far. My last Nvidia card was also a Visiontek - the original GeForce 256 SDR.
 
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro - No Problems Still works - Now Mounted on the wall for being so awesome
Diamond Radeon 9800 Pro - Friend borrowed it and he put in the Powercable upside down,killing it.
Powercolor X700 Pro - Worked Great in HTPC, Replaced it, gave to my sister
Visiontek X1600XT - Worked Great in HTPC, dropped it and chipped the PCB, Now dead.
Sapphire Radeon X1950XT - Worked well, Letting a friend borrow it right now.
Sappire Radeon HD2600XT - Works fantastically in HTPC. Soon getting replaced
Diamond Radeon HD 3850 - Flawless Operation. Solid for hours of gaming. Being moved to HTPC.
MSI Radeon HD4850 - Couldn't help buying it for $150 to Replace the HD3850.

I've run the Gamut I guess when It comes to ATI Card. Haven't come across a bad manufacturer yet. Maybe my dumb luck. Any failures of the graphic card came from my own (or a friends) stupidity. I had a Geforce 7900GT that failed (remember those days?) and EVGA was quick to replace it. Other then that, my Nvida experience has been fine and dandy as well
 
In short VisionTek is the best by far, Until some one else can give you lifetime ..You know like the greenBoys Bfg/EVGA/XFX.....Untill then Visiontek/ATI is all i will use for ATI

Hmmm out of 20years of gaming and blowimg stuff up(Overclocking modifyingEct,,The FOUR COMPANIES ABOVE are tried and true....

P.S. Ati has always been limited, hopefully this will change for better services/warranties from others..;)


Note: HIS/Sapphire almost impossiable to deal with .They are very diffacult to contact....Diamond takes for ever to ship anything...

Visiontek has best overall /warranty/service out of ALL/ATI vendors..ATM
 
Vittra said:
Most of these were created by Sapphire though, with the ATI brand logo.
Click to expand...

um no.

LawGiver said:
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME
Click to expand...

also um no

Avoid sapphire. There just bad on every possible level. I had a dodgy experiance with HIS but I got my card back. There are Visiontek horror stories but I have yet experiance one, and I've been through the routine twice now.
 
Anything good or bad on palit? I read somewhere that palit was going to start making the 48xx cards for ati, but I haven't yet seen any on sale on the egg or elsewhere. Anything to worry about Palit, whenever it starts selling the 48xx cards? I know the company's got a good rep and so far it sold the nv gpus with no major problems that I heard off.
 
I will buy most card brands but Sapphire definitely not, avoid like the plague.
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Easy now with the plague stamp! Remember it´s always possible to get a bad product, no matter the manufacturer.

Personally I am real happy with my HD3850 AGP from Sapphire, I never have any issues or crashes. It overclocks well on stock cooler too. A great card really, that plays Bioshock, DIRT, Prey, CS:S, Jericho, and Mass Effect on max settings in 1920 x 1200 just fine too :D ...only motion blur needs to be disengaged.

Had negative experiences with: Asus x1950pro, Powercolor HD3870
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I had great experiences with my Powercolor 8500 a long time ago, a lot can happen between these series I agree.

So far I am undecided with which 4870 to get though..
 
nakedhand said:
Easy now with the plague stamp! Remember it´s always possible to get a bad product, no matter the manufacturer.
Click to expand...

The discussion is centred around who gives the worst customer service.
 
Just bought a Visiontek- good website (which I've found to be surprisingly rare), plenty of recommendations from others, good price. So yeah. Bump.
 
I just think its best to buy from the egg to begin with. I can recommend sapphire and diamond. I had a sapphire 1950xt survive a broken barb on a gpu block along with a 10 hour drowning.
My friend bought a diamond and won a phenom chip for the scratch off ticket in their retail packaging.
Sounds like a good brand to me!
 
I know that after my edge 3d experience I will never own another Diamond product. talk about coding / product / support hell
 
had a x1900xtx power color back in the day and my father had a saphhire, both 0 problems.

I then went nvidia for a couple of cards (8800gtx, 8800gts 512) now am back ATI with 2 powercolor 4850s so far so goood.
 
I picked up 2 HIS 4870s, but seeing as NONE of the ATI partners cover the card if you remove the heatsink, and i plan on going watercooling, i'm screwed no matter who i went with. If either of these cards goes belly up early i'm going to be annoyed as 2 of the 3 big nvidia companies dont automatically void your warranty for changing the heatsink.
 
The Gecube 3850 I bought a while ago was a lemon and they don't even respond to their emails. They don't even have a US based telephone number. Luckily newegg let me return it without a restocking fee after even they couldn't find their number. Will never buy from them again..
 
Currently using Diamond 3870 - fixed the problems with it but steer clear of Diamond unless you want to be their free QA/beta tester.

Also using Visiontek 2600XT - robust card.
Powercolor - no problems so far though their documentation on their driver CD talks about Radeon X800 series!?!
 
if u put the stock heat sync back on if u need to send it for RMA how would they know if u ever took it off?
 
Well I recommended ASUS somewhere at the beginning of the thread for their fast turn around time, less than a week for me. But turns out they didn't feel like tasting the card much, and sent it back in a different box and still same problem... artifacts like crazy. Let's see how they take care of this screw-up.
 
I've actually heard a LOT of bad asus customer support stories. They are also one of the companies i avoid.
 
picked up a visiontek from buy.com.it shipped out on monday i got it on tuesday!muhahahahhahahahha.runs good so far.cod41080p 2xaa and 16xaf.70fps average!crysis 1900x1200 average 30fps!
 
A reposting of my previous message in another thread:

Avoid Visiontek like the plague!

They don't honor warranties, their customer service is almost non-existent, and they are flat out incompetent in their service department.

I have a Visiontek 3870 that kept on corrupting and crashing in shader intensive DX10 games. I first thought it was the fan issue and updated the BIOS, then I plugged in the fan directly to 12V for full speed -- no dice. Finally I sent it back to Visiontek. After nearly four weeks with no emails from them, it came back with a letter saying they could find no problem "after extensively testing it for 36 hours." Of course the exact same problems remained, so I sent several, much more emphatic emails where they finally agreed to exchange the card. I ship it back. Three weeks later, again with no email communication from them, I get the same card back, same bullshit letter, only this time they "upgraded the BIOS." Arrrrrgh! Assholes!!! $36 in shipping/handling fees and my card still doesn't work.

Finally I took matters in my own hands, voided the warranty, and replaced the heatsink/fan with a VF900-cu. Guess what? No more problems! Plus, instead of a lousy 800/1200 overclock, I now get 891/1261 and temps stay cool.

Avoid Visiontek like the plague! Go with a reliable manufacturer like ASUS or Gigabyte. Even though their warranty period is only three years, at least they honor it.
 
Nenu said:
The discussion is centred around who gives the worst customer service.
Click to expand...

I am so glad you could fill me in Nenu :) zzzzzZZ.. here is the premise (original question from the OP) of the thread if you missed it:

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!
Click to expand...

Which is why I shared some personal experience with these products...
 
nakedhand said:
I am so glad you could fill me in Nenu :) zzzzzZZ.. here is the premise (original question from the OP) of the thread if you missed it:

Which is why I shared some personal experience with these products...
Click to expand...

The context of the discussion needs to be taken into account.

I made a comment under a certain context.
You quoted me in your reply and started talking about something else.
I explain what the discussion was based on.
You completely ignore that and waffle and on some more.

Its you who is bringing up an issue that has been covered on page 3 of this thread and you who were not on the topic of discussion that you intruded upon.
 
bfellow said:
Currently using Diamond 3870 - fixed the problems with it but steer clear of Diamond unless you want to be their free QA/beta tester.

Also using Visiontek 2600XT - robust card.
Powercolor - no problems so far though their documentation on their driver CD talks about Radeon X800 series!?!
Click to expand...

What problem did you have with it? I have a Diamond also and its been fine, no problems at all.

edit:eek:ops I thought you had a 4870 like I have.
 
My last 3 cards have been from Sapphire. X800XT PE> X1950 PRO > HD 3870. I guess by reading some posts on here I am glad to say I've never had a problem with any of their cards.
Never the less, my next card will probably be Visiontek HD 4870 only because they are the only ones that I can find locally.
 
I haven't seen and 4800-series cards from Asus, but apparently they exist.

A 1 gig 4850 but no 1 gig 4870? Ahh well.. I'm sure if the 4870 x2 comes out, that'll be the enthusiast's dream for the next little while...

Asus' support website has gotten much better than it used to be, but downloading drivers is still painfully slow. Atleast they throw in a leather mouse pad... eww.
 
killerbobjr said:
A reposting of my previous message in another thread:

Avoid Visiontek like the plague!

They don't honor warranties, their customer service is almost non-existent, and they are flat out incompetent in their service department.

I have a Visiontek 3870 that kept on corrupting and crashing in shader intensive DX10 games. I first thought it was the fan issue and updated the BIOS, then I plugged in the fan directly to 12V for full speed -- no dice. Finally I sent it back to Visiontek. After nearly four weeks with no emails from them, it came back with a letter saying they could find no problem "after extensively testing it for 36 hours." Of course the exact same problems remained, so I sent several, much more emphatic emails where they finally agreed to exchange the card. I ship it back. Three weeks later, again with no email communication from them, I get the same card back, same bullshit letter, only this time they "upgraded the BIOS." Arrrrrgh! Assholes!!! $36 in shipping/handling fees and my card still doesn't work.

Finally I took matters in my own hands, voided the warranty, and replaced the heatsink/fan with a VF900-cu. Guess what? No more problems! Plus, instead of a lousy 800/1200 overclock, I now get 891/1261 and temps stay cool.

Avoid Visiontek like the plague! Go with a reliable manufacturer like ASUS or Gigabyte. Even though their warranty period is only three years, at least they honor it.
Click to expand...

Dude that sounds horrible............i have a visiontek card and i hope i dont get treated like that.Ive rma'd to MSI before and they just send out a different card instead of testing and repairing the old one. In a timely manner and all.
 
Sapphire is just buying an ATI card. I can see a piece of Ruby's hair under the Sapphire stick of my X1800XT, so its just a reference ATI Manufactured card, that had a sticker put on top it. Never had any problems, and my X1800XT runs strong to this day. I asked a question on the Sapphire forum once and it was responded quite fast. Never had to RMA, or call in, so can't speak on that, but so far Sapphire been great. Lucky me?
 
killerbobjr said:
A reposting of my previous message in another thread:

Avoid Visiontek like the plague!
blah blah blah
Click to expand...

I don't care how good a company is, your always going to get a situation like this with a percentage of people. No reason to totally avoid a good brand. Sheesh.
 
WhiteZero said:
I don't care how good a company is, your always going to get a situation like this with a percentage of people. No reason to totally avoid a good brand. Sheesh.
Click to expand...

Not good; the least of the ATI AIB evils. If I had to order the AIB's in order of best to worst, Visiontek would be maybe #6, and the first from ATI.

ATI needs to bump their partners to improve customer service and support. Its embarrasing, especially from sapphire. Support is a very real reason I'm considering a GTX260 over an HD4870.
 
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