What brands are not utter crap these days?

N

npurdin

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 9, 2006
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Finally doing a new system build, since my opty 185 is just not cutting it anymore. (Yes that's a socket 939, yes I know it's long overdue). Dropping my pair of Zalman edition XFX 8800gt, and looking for a single card to start the new build with, but while i used to stick with bfg, evga, and, xfx, I'm hearing terrible things about the xfx radeons on the market, and seeing nothing from evga. (not to mention bfg)

So here is my question: Are the Powercolor, Sapphire, and HIS brands worth looking at? How would you rate them, or does it make a difference? Is it really just a matter of what cooler you get on the card now?

Thanks for the input, I've got a lot of catching up to do.
 
BFG went belly up some time ago just FYI
EVGA is all nVidia, they really do bleed green there

Asus and MSI are the two best ones I'm aware of in the AMD camp
 
From my personal experience....

I have had Sapphire, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA cards. Bought EVGA Titans over Asus due to motherboard RMA issues I had late last year/earlier this year. Also, it sounds like from reading the forums that Asus RMA issues carry over to the GPUs too.

All worked fine. I had an issue with Gigabyte cards which was resolved through RMA and I will say this, Gigabytes RMA process is IMO really, really good. No hassle, very quick, retarded fast. For AMD cards I would go with Gigabyte, for Nvidia cards I would go with EVGA. EVGA wont reject an RMA if you had a block on your card, just be sure to keep the stock cooler in case of RMA.
 
Asus should be avoided.
The latest thread in a long saga of bad customer service.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1783922
They did similar bad to me.

KFA are pretty hard to deal with if something goes wrong. I had a bad experience at their hands with many quality and cs failures, one after the other, and they expose user information on insecure servers if you need to do an RMA.

Gigabyte looked after me where Asus wouldnt with a motherboard issue.
 
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Were I purchasing an AMD card I would go with XFX, MSI, ASUS or Gigabyte.
 
Ive bought nothing but Saphhire for the last 3 gens, not a single problem.
 
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The Mac said:
Ive bought nothing but Saphhire for the last gens, not a single problem.
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Have you had to RMA a Sapphire card before. Are they easy to deal with? Quick and painless? I am leaning Gigabyte due to past experience but I wonder about Sapphire.
 
I try to look at the quality of the components used on the card, reading through the review of the Asus R9 280x they're using better chokes for example. Coil whine is a pretty common complaint in reviews of a lot of AMD cards.
 
In my opinion MSI and XFX have been best to work with RMA wise. I didnt like my experience with sapphire RMA, but i do really like sapphire cards.
 
EVGA has a pretty solid reputation around the net. Never had to deal with any RMA/support from them, hopefully never will need to.

Gigabyte cards have been pretty solid for me also. I have a windforce 650Ti and I really like it. Their OC-Guru program works like crap for me, but that was an easy fix with a download of Precision-X.

Galaxy wasn't on my radar until the past year or so. I have not had any experience with them, but they seem to be an excellent vendor. I wouldn't think twice about picking up one of their cards I have been very impressed with their forum rep here. He has been very supportive for any issues involving their products.

As for XFX, I used to really like them. But their support seems to have fallen off big time in the past year or so. You can still get issues taken care of, but their new ticketing system seems like a train wreck last time I checked. You about have to contact the forum rep to get anything done in a timely manner. Not really worth the hassle to me. I had a double lifetime warranty card from them, and wasn't able to transfer the warranty to the new buyer because of their shitty ticket system. So I'll avoid XFX for now.
 
A couple months ago a friend of mine RMA'd his old Asus 5870 still on warranty, same week he got back a 7950 DC2.

He was happy.
 
they are all about the same imo. there are horror stories about all of the vendors, so just buy whats in your price range.
 
Speaking of price range, I'm looking at around the 200 mark... So 660ti or 7870/7950...which is why I'm looking at the radeon offerings... seems like more performance for your buck.
 
npurdin said:
Speaking of price range, I'm looking at around the 200 mark... So 660ti or 7870/7950...which is why I'm looking at the radeon offerings... seems like more performance for your buck.
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A 7950 oc'd to about stock 7970/770 levels is hard to beat at $200 or less IMO.
 
Sapphire and MSI are the top to I would go for, never used Gigabyte but they sound ok.


ASUS is a no go, do not buy an ASUS card, the latest cards have been riddled with design flaws. Their Customer Service has been shit and unless you can prove that you did not deliberately damage your card they will not honour the warranty. So if a cap blows unless you can send them prove you didn't make it blow they will not replace the card.
 
Johnny26 said:
Have you had to RMA a Sapphire card before. Are they easy to deal with? Quick and painless? I am leaning Gigabyte due to past experience but I wonder about Sapphire.
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ive never needed to, s i cant answer that.

Id rather go for reliability, RMA in general is a nusensce...
 
Which brands are still RMA friendly if you remove their cooler and use a water cooler?
 
I dunno where you heard bad things about XFX, but I've had great luck with them. I have 2 XFX 6870s, 1 XFX 7870 and 1 XFX 6970. One of the 6870's on my son's rig, had a fan that died a while back. In just over a week I had a brand new 7870 sitting at my door. I call that pretty good RMA service.
 
Pitbully said:
I dunno where you heard bad things about XFX, but I've had great luck with them. I have 2 XFX 6870s, 1 XFX 7870 and 1 XFX 6970. One of the 6870's on my son's rig, had a fan that died a while back. In just over a week I had a brand new 7870 sitting at my door. I call that pretty good RMA service.
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Was reading reviews on Newegg for the 7870 ghz edition... Seemed like a lot of cards were failing after a short time...most likely heat related...so that turned me off to any odd those"double dissipation" cards... Maybe I'm just reading too much into it and Newegg had a bad batch go out... Not really sure.
 
I've also had similar negative experiences with Asus...the first time I ever spent over $200 on a motherboard was for an Asus CrossfireX AM3+ board....needed to RMA it...horrible customer experience. It came to the point where I was talking to one of their managers and just told the F-it I'm going to Gigabyte and will never buy another Asus product. Prior to that I had 2 Gigabyte boards and had 0 problems. Replaced the Asus board with the Gigabyte board I have now, no issues. I currently have two XFX cards in crossfire and have no troubles with those either. They're ~2.5 years old. And I've had Gigabyte cards in the past with no issues.
 
I've had 4 xfx cards and 2 needed to be rma'd, had no issue at all with the process. I've had 2 MSI, and 2 gigabyte and no problems from them at all. Hard to recommend one over another. Good luck deciding.
 
I thought I'd toss in my good story for HIS which is usually one of the cheaper brands.

One of my 7970s died after 1.5 years straight of bitcoin mining and they RMA'd it just fine. Did take 3 weeks after sending the broken one out to get a replacement though. Process just involved sending over pictures of the card, serial #, and receipt.
 
I buy MSI and EVGA. Asus is my 3rd choice if pricing is right but their warranty is mediocre.
 
No offense, but threads like this are kinda pointless. Now i could say i prefer Asus products but Asus makes both good products and bad products (quality wise). Corsair could make awesome cases but make mediocre fans. Look at OCZ. Years ago pretty much all their products were total CRAP. Then someone else took the helm and now they crank out decent components.Your best bet is to do your research before buying individual parts.
In my experience i'd say go G.Skill for memory (i've had multiple issues with Corsair memory), Corsair makes solid cases, Crucial or Samsung for SSD's, Western Digital for HDD's, optical drives are cheap so whatever brand lol, video cards are a crapshoot...do you're research, and Asus for motherboards (8 boards, not one problem). For power supplies remember to check Jonnyguru.com for a review on which PSU you're looking at.

Cliffs: DO YOUR RESEARCH FIRST BEFORE BUYING INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS.
 
I've sent an HIS 4970 back and received a new unit in under 2 weeks.

And I live in Canada.

I've heard Sapphire ain't bad either.

I'd avoid asus.
 
AMD:
HiS, Sapphire, and Powercolor are all great, though you will need to look for the special versions of Powercolor for better overclockability. What they do have is some of the quietest coolers

Sapphire's lineup will also have to be teased apart to figure out the best overclockers, though they are overall of the highest quality, but not as quiet

HIS has some quiet and very cool running cards that tend to overclock well

The big 3 of ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte are always good of course. ASUS tends to have quiet cards, MSI has extremely quiet cards or loud cards depending on the model, and tend to build in extra overclocking features, and Gigabyte tend to have good stock OC performance but are less interested in building or binning further manual OC mileage

Though OC ultimately depends on the individual card, and that is not just a token disclaimer
 
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Now for Nvidia, the Big 3 (ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte) + Galaxy and EVGA are all great.

EVGA's coolers have not been very good, being traditionally barely modified from reference, though with this generation they are making some effort. Their coolers are still loud, though. They have had special overvolting modules for their cards however, depending on the model, something which is useful in extreme manual overclocking.

The reason they're successful is PR, really. Word of mouth from the days when the other manufacturers, being non English speaking, had no US based tech support, and from their former lifetime warranty policy IIRC, which was favored by overclockers because it helped them out when they toasted their cards while overvolting

Galaxy had a very competitive cooler for the 660 Ti 2GB version, neck in neck with the Big 3, being quieter and cooler and more power efficient than the MSI, though with the 760 MSI has upped their game a notch and developed what looks to be an extremely quiet cooler. Galaxy was really screwed by Nvidia on the 660 Ti (expensive, throttled memory bus) for not being able to have more exposure, otherwise they could have made a bigger splash in the 600 series with their competitive cooler if the 660 Ti itself had had no drawbacks

They've been looking to make a name for themselves in the States, and I respect their management's decision making. I first learned of them when they offered a great rebate on my first modern video card, a GTS 450. And now we have the 780 HOF, to make waves among the enthusiast crowd and develop and demonstrate design and engineering excellence.

Zotac deserves an honorable mention; they've put effort into making their products look high quality and they make great compact cards. They pull off some engineering feats in going after the micro ATX and ITX market, though their large card models have suffered accordingly recently
 
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You need to define your criteria a bit, and then as others have said look into your choice a bit before purchase.

IF you are concerned about warranty: evga and MSI have very responsive warranty. MSI sells very good products and they sell both NVidia and AMD.

Currently ASUS warranty services are pretty poor. You can read thread after thread about how they do/don't service their products after sale.

If you only buy reference products, honestly it doesn't matter who you choose, the cards are generally all from one source and rebranded, again it's all about the warranty.

If you are after AIB add-on coolers or overclocks or extra bling, then you just have to research that particular product.

Quite honestly, I've owned GPUs from nearly every vendor the last 12 years.....my favourite was BFG.....alas.....but I have only had to RMA two cards out of dozens. One evga had a bad fan and a Sapphire just decided to stop working; both RMAs went without a hitch.
 
If you like to mod or watercool the components stick with XFX and EVGA. They are the ONLY companies that will cover the card after having removed the stock heatsink. I have had to RMA a motherboard from EVGA in the past and they are easy to work with. My 6970s died back in December of last year and it was about a 2 week turn around to get both cards replaced by XFX. Honestly these are the only 2 companies I buy from just because they are mod friendly and easy to work with.
 
Tych-0 said:
+1 for Galaxy and an active rep on this forum.
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Galaxy doesn't make Radeons.

OP asked for manufacturers for AMD cards.

MSI, Sapphire, Gigabyte or XFX, depending on features & price. They all have good customer service.

veedubfreak said:
If you like to mod or watercool the components stick with XFX and EVGA. They are the ONLY companies that will cover the card after having removed the stock heatsink. ...
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NOT true. MSI will honor the warranty after removing the heatsink. I RMA'd a 7950 a month ago where I had lapped the hsf. They didn't say a word, just sent me a new card.
 
^^^ yes - MSI will work with you on a RMA as long as the card is not physically damaged. This is another reason I love them, as most of my cards then last few generations have been from them. Great quality and performance from their coolers and custom designed cards. I have also used ASUS but haven't really liked the quality compared to the MSI options I replaced them with.
 
TheGoat Eater said:
^^^ yes - MSI will work with you on a RMA as long as the card is not physically damaged. This is another reason I love them, as most of my cards then last few generations have been from them. Great quality and performance from their coolers and custom designed cards. I have also used ASUS but haven't really liked the quality compared to the MSI options I replaced them with.
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Um... msi also honored the warranty for the two cards I sent in that had burn damage.

I swear I'm not trying to break the cards! I just have a lot of them and the rest are holding up fine.
 
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