new video card died :(

[Polarhound]

Bought a Powercolor 6870 off Newegg a couple of weeks ago, only to have it die on me yesterday. Even when it was working, the speed-throttling Powerwhatever crud was cranking speeds way down in 3D to 2D levels. Finally saw the thread about using MSI Afterburner to fix it, and it worked great... only to have the card BSOD my box on bootup every single time after that.

I'm not even going to wait for them to send me another.. Just going to overpay locally for a GTS 560 this afternoon. I'm done with ATI cards.

Salt In The Wound: Because it had a promo item included, the full cost of it now gets deducted off my RMA. At this point though, just going to have to deal with the fact.

/EOR

 

[OC-Chronic]

Every ATI card I owned died within 2 years, always ran hot & offered less performance than nVidia, dollar for dollar. The last decent card that ATI made was X1900 series.

 

[cesium666]

Every ATI card I owned died within 2 years, always ran hot & offered less performance than nVidia, dollar for dollar. The last decent card that ATI made was X1900 series.

lol wut I've personally seen the exact opposite behavior. Always got ATI cards that are significantly cheaper, use farrrrr less power, run cooler, and offer better perf/$ than nvidia. reliability wise never had a problem with either ati or nvidia

also @op, you bought a powercolor, aka one of the shittier AIBs for ATI. It's worth paying a few bucks more for a better brand.

 

[teletran8]

When I think of CHEAP graphics cards Powercolor is numero uno. Just look at the cards visually and you can see they cut corners on all areas of the card.

You should really look into MSI with the Twin Frozers, and ASUS with the DCII cooling setups. That and Gold plated inputs/outputs. Gigabyte cards seem to be getting really nice to.

ATI seems to have the more flaky companies, but they also have the good ones too. Just people get suckered into saving 20 bucks to get a hotter less quality controlled card. Which makes absolutely NO sense to me as an enthusiast.

 

[N1GHTRA1N]

lol wut I've personally seen the exact opposite behavior. Always got ATI cards that are significantly cheaper, use farrrrr less power, run cooler, and offer better perf/$ than nvidia. reliability wise never had a problem with either ati or nvidia

also @op, you bought a powercolor, aka one of the shittier AIBs for ATI. It's worth paying a few bucks more for a better brand.

+1. Once ATI stopped selling their own cards at retail I switched to using other brands. I've used Asus and MSI and both have been great (although I only switched to MSI recently). I couldn't bring myself to buy Power Color, VisionTek, Sapphire, XFX, etc. I only looked at Gigabtye, Asus, and MSI. If including nvidia I'd also consider evga, I own a evga 460 card too.

I do hear good things about HIS too but I never used them.

ATI have always been solid for me. In fact I know my old All in Wonder 9800 Pro, and All in Wonder X800XL cards are still working. I also know my dad still has a Radeon 7500 that works no problem. I even have a Rage 128 Pro somewhere that works too.

When I think of CHEAP graphics cards Powercolor is numero uno. Just look at the cards visually and you can see they cut corners on all areas of the card.

You should really look into MSI with the Twin Frozers, and ASUS with the DCII cooling setups. That and Gold plated inputs/outputs. Gigabyte cards seem to be getting really nice to.

ATI seems to have the more flaky companies, but they also have the good ones too. Just people get suckered into saving 20 bucks to get a hotter less quality controlled card. Which makes absolutely NO sense to me as an enthusiast.

No kidding. When I bought my first MSI 6970 Lightning the price was $380.86. The cheapest 6970 I could find at the time was an XFX for $349.99. Saivng $30.87 before taxes didn't make sense considering how much better the MSI card is. The MSI Lightning was the most expensive 6970 card when I bought it, it was $0.87 more than the Asus 6970 DCUII. The price gap between cheap brands and high quality is so low I find it hard to understand why people buy the cheap brands. I gladly paid 8.5% more for what I consider the best 6970 on the market.

 

[Polarhound]

Evga is actually what I ended up going with for the 560. It's not the Ti, but considering I'm going from a gts 250 a month ago I'm sure I'll be happy with the performance improvement.

 

[cesium666]

+1. Once ATI stopped selling their own cards at retail I switched to using other brands. I've used Asus and MSI and both have been great (although I only switched to MSI recently). I couldn't bring myself to buy Power Color, VisionTek, Sapphire, XFX, etc. I only looked at Gigabtye, Asus, and MSI. If including nvidia I'd also consider evga, I own a evga 460 card too.

Why the XFX hate they're definitely one of the better AIBs, especially with the double lifetime warranty

 

[N1GHTRA1N]

Why the XFX hate they're definitely one of the better AIBs, especially with the double lifetime warranty

In all fairness I've never used XFX but I have heard some negative stories so I skip them. I don't consider them an option when I've had success with other brands.

 

[RaZoRbLaDeD]

lol wut I've personally seen the exact opposite behavior. Always got ATI cards that are significantly cheaper, use farrrrr less power, run cooler, and offer better perf/$ than nvidia. reliability wise never had a problem with either ati or nvidia

also @op, you bought a powercolor, aka one of the shittier AIBs for ATI. It's worth paying a few bucks more for a better brand.

Agreed