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So I think I'm ready to buy a 4870x2, but I don't know which brand is the best. I was looking at Asus, MSI, Visiontek, etc. What do you guys consider the best?
There was a good discussion (err.....argument) in the thread during the BestBuy deal last month.
To me, it all comes down to support. The cards are essentially all the same, tho' MSI now offers an OC version.
Diamond and VisionTek both have US Support. VisionTek offers a "lifetime" warranty.
I have had MSI ATI brand cards in the past, they offer a solid warranty and pretty good support system.
Currently, I have two Sapphire X2s. I bought these due to availability at release. I have no experience with Sapphire support, but I have heard it isn't too good and the warranty is two years. You deal with the retailer, not Sapphire. Sapphire manufactures nearly all of ATI branded cards......so you get what you get. Again,I did consider warranties and the like, but at the time I was ready to purchase, about all I could find was Sapphire branded cards.
Unfortunately, no ATI partners offer a step-up like BFG or EVGA.
Honestly, when have you had a GPU go bad??? Me, never. I had to RMA one EVGA card because the fan broke, that is it over a 7 year history of a number of cards.
The longest I've had card(s) in my computer before upgrading was 15 months.....8800 GTXs.