Best Manufacturer of HD 5870 ATI Cards?

[Damir Poljak]

I have decided to buy one of these cards and I would appreciate if you can give me advice.
My personal favorites are XFX and ASUS.
What is your opinion?
Thanx

[doz]

They are all rpetty close to the same. I like Visiontek for the lifetime warranty.

[Theocnoob]

:bday:I have decided to buy one of these cards and I would appreciate if you can give me advice.
My personal favorites are XFX and ASUS.
What is your opinion?
Thanx

I am accepting GTX 285 donations

[GT3mich]

Stay away from Asus cards.

[IcedOutCpu]

I love my 5870 from Sapphire..

[Brolloks]

Stay away from Asus cards.

Please state why you making this statment, if you cannot back it up I ask you to not post comments like this.

Asus is one of the most reputable manufacturers of PC components and their products are top notch

To the OP, all the cards on the shelf atm are exactly the same design, all that is different is the logo sticker, Bios, then off course price, warranty and customer services.

[GT3mich]

I love my 5870 from Sapphire..Then put it in your sig;)

[Alien432]

I'd pick the first manufacture who first ships a 5870X2. :burn:

[Neuromancer]

Please state why you making this statment, if you cannot back it up I ask you to not post comments like this.

Asus is one of the most reputable manufacturers of PC components and their products are top notch

To the OP, all the cards on the shelf atm are exactly the same design, all that is different is the logo sticker, Bios, then off course price, warranty and customer services.

LOL uh oh dont look at my sig :p

ASUS is highly respected and makes some of the most expensive components you can buy for PC, for a reason. They excel in the enthusiast market.

ASUS Customer service is top notch. A user on these forums bought an open box R2E from newegg that was faulty, and ASUS sent him a new motherboard. That is service. (Or course $250 for just a motherboard, you expect the velvet ropes etc lol)

IF you go budget ASUS products, well the old saying is, you get what you pay for. That is not usually the case though, not with PC components. AMD motherboards, well not so much IMHO. (Check the bot, I think you will be hard pressed to find an asus mobo in the top 10 of any AM2+/AM3 benchmark, definitly not in the top 5. Does it mean the product sucks? No. Just not enthusiast level).

For ATi cards though. ASUS all the way. They are the reason there is a 4890 today. Probably had a big effect on the 5000 series as well considering the rather short order between them.

As for what to buy now. My maker for reference cards is HIS. IF you are an overclocker, it is a good choice. Just get an aftermarket cooling solution if you are not waiting for the OEMs to pump them out. (Like the IceQ design that became the STOCK cooler for 4/5 series GPUs). Good product that exceeds expectations, good customer support, and not gnerally on the top end price wise.

Have not owned an XFX card for ATi yet, they took a long time to make the switch after the announcement, so I would expect good things. 5 series I would consider going with that company, the 4 series is probably more of a foot wetting experience for them. But they should have good Customer support as well, after many years of making nVidia cards, but it could be a backfire too after living under the thumb for so long.

tit for tat. For the first gen card and average OCer, not going to be any serious difference right now, without enduser intervention :) wait for second gen (not die shrink or march change... just new coolers, bugs fixed, maybe volterra chips updated) before worrying about what company makes the best :)

[GT3mich]

Please state why you making this statment, if you cannot back it up I ask you to not post comments like this.

Asus is one of the most reputable manufacturers of PC components and their products are top notch

Why I'd be happy too.:mad:
Last November on Thanksgiving day my brother and his wife decided to spring for a new desktop for their home. They were using a 6 year old Dell 8200.
I put together a system that included this ASUS card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121276
After I ordered all the parts from Newegg I started reading the reviews and became concerned with the video card. The failure rate was alarming. So alarming that I told my brother not to send in for the $30 mir. I figured if the card failed he could send it in for replacement. I was afraid his card would fail. I then went to the ASUS forums for the card and became even more worried. Read thru the forum if you want. Fan failures everywhere.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?elitepost=0&SLanguage=en-us&board_id=9&model=EAH4870%20Series&page_size=20&page=1&count=170
So back in June my brother calls and says the computer screen goes black after a few minutes. I have him look at the GPU fan and he says its not running. Bingo. I'm not going to go any further than to say I put an aftermarket cooler on the card and its been running fine since. You should read thru that forum. You'll understand why i put a cooler on the card and didn't send it in for a replacement. I know the card overheated 3 times. Not so sure about what they may have sent back.........

When I post something like this its for a reason...

[Brolloks]

You had one bad experience with one card, that does not make Asus a bad card manufacturer now does it. If I base my buying decision on bad cards, boards etc I'd take up fishing for a hobby and not keep on buying and benching hardware.

[MadMan007]

That is one thing I don't like about ATi cards is the partners as a whole kind of suck with all their cheaped out cooling and card designs. NV keeps a tighter reign on things for 'enthusiast' cards and while that might seem boring it does mean fewer muckups. That's not to say there aren't decent ATi partners though.

Personally I'd go XFX as a first choice not for the warranty per se although double lifetime rocks but because afaik they have great and fast c.s. and then just about any of the other that offer a multiyear warranty. The way I figure it for a video card a 3 year warranty is sufficient, by that time a replacement of the same card or a newer one of the same performance ought to be very inexpensive. Plus we don't tend to keep cards that long anyway ;)

[GT3mich]

You had one bad experience with one card, that does not make Asus a bad card manufacturer now does it. If I base my buying decision on bad cards, boards etc I'd take up fishing for a hobby and not keep on buying and benching hardware.
Did you read any of the reviews at Newegg? Its one bad card after another.
I didn't say Asus made bad components. The OP asked who made good ATI cards. Asus making a bad 4870 IMO is a big deal. I've had bad Gigabyte MBs. Faulty ram from Crucial. I've bought from them again without any problems. Asus video cards? Never again. They knew there was a problem and still sold the cards. That is BS.

[freeagent]

I like Asus :)

They have made some of the best boards I have had the pleasure of overclocking :thup:

They are a little pricey, but they will let you exploit your hardware until you wring everylast drop out of it, or till you get scared :)

This Asus video card tho, I dunno.. Sure it clocks nice, but theres some wierd things that it does that I find just plain irritateing.

[MattNo5ss]

If Asus has voltage controls on the 5xxx series like some of their 4xxx series, then I would buy XFX for warranty and flash to Asus BIOS for voltage control. If no voltage control, then I would still get XFX for warranty.

[JonSimonzi]

I can't remember the last time I owned anything besides an Asus motherboard. But as far as video cards go, XFX. Lifetime 1 + 1 warranty, can't really shake a stick at that. Helps great with resell value.

[Damir Poljak]

So, XFX it is, thanx all +1

[Deanzo]

A little late to this party.


As all 5870 are all but the same, hardware wise.

I would have said Asus, there bios is better from an overclocking stand point.


Isn't XFX lifetime warranty, the time they are still selling them ?
If so, it's a year or 3 right ? not my lifetime.

[SuperDave1685]

I've read nothing but good things about MSI card personally :) Just my $0.02

[kkpudge7]

I just ordered an MSi 5870, hopefully they dont disappoint. My 4870's were sapphire and they ran great for the 8 months or so that I had them. I would have preferred to go xfx or saphhire with this card as well, but I didn't want to sit around and wait for them to come in stock. I just jumped on the first brand that egg listed as in stock. Turns out the sapphire one was in stock for about 10 minutes (few hours after i ordered mine), but oh well, hardware wise all the 5870's are the same right now. Just a different sticker on them.

[MadMan007]

A little late to this party.


As all 5870 are all but the same, hardware wise.

I would have said Asus, there bios is better from an overclocking stand point.


Isn't XFX lifetime warranty, the time they are still selling them ?
If so, it's a year or 3 right ? not my lifetime.

Nope:

GRAPHICS CARDS: The limited hardware warranty for Graphics Cards lasts for a time period of one year. If you register the product online at http://www.xfxforce.com/ within 30 days of purchase, your limited warranty will be extended for the duration of your life. Registration within 30 days of the date of purchase is a condition precedent to receiving the lifetime warranty.

http://www.xfxforce.com/en-us/Help/Support/WarrantyInformation.aspx?ispreview=true (You need to enter the region and product line, the above was for N America and Radeon HD graphics.)