Radeon HD 6970 BUT WHICH BRAND??

Guys, I have no clue on which brand to choose. Someone suggested MSI and thats what I've decided on. Any reason why I should go for MSI? Here are the specs of the system Im about to buy:

Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Steel ATX Full Tower Compucase Case with USB 3.0, Black Interior and Four Fans-1x ...

ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

MSI R6970 Lightning Radeon HD 6970 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V v2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active ...

Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 3000 ...

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM

HITACHI HDS721050CLA362 (0F10381) 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Thermalright Venomous X - RT 120mm CPU Cooler

MSI Lightning/TwinFrozrII/whatchamacallitthesedays have great cooling and overclocking potential.

Other than that, pretty much any of the reputable brands such as Sapphire, EVGA, etc will do.

Hello. I just received my XFX Radeon HD6970 this morning.
It's installed and I love it!
This is the second XFX card i have bought, and I have 2 friends, one of them bought the XFX Radeon HD6870. The other one bought the HD6950.
All of them are working fine. The MIR process has also gone smoothly for all 3 of us.

i have a Radeon 6950 2gb XFX and i love it!
but how i chose my brand was
1. warranty (i got a lifetime for free)
2. price/MIR (i got mine $30 cheap then all the other because of a $30 rebate)
3. any free thing IE games crossfire thing and anything else

I got a sapphire 6970. With dirt3 free coupon and experience the great HD movies and games.

Personally, I go with XFX because of their double lifetime warranty, but I've bought Vision Tek in the past, Gigabyte, as well as Asus and eVGA and have not really had a problem with any of them. I have a pair of 6970s and a 6850 from XFX right now and I have a passively cooled Gigabyte 6770...all work fine. The only dead card I've ever received was a Sapphire branded card and that was a goof up on Newegg's part where they accidently shipped me an RMA card even though I bought new. (they made it right by refunding me and knocking 25% off my next purchase.)

I have 3 Sapphire 6970s, before these I had 2 Sapphire 5870s, and before that, 2 Sapphire 4980s. I have never had them die on me. I think they are great, BUT be warned Sapphire's warranty process for RMA is not the best.

notarat said:

Personally, I go with XFX because of their double lifetime warranty, but I've bought Vision Tek in the past, Gigabyte, as well as Asus and eVGA and have not really had a problem with any of them. I have a pair of 6970s and a 6850 from XFX right now and I have a passively cooled Gigabyte 6770...all work fine. The only dead card I've ever received was a Sapphire branded card and that was a goof up on Newegg's part where they accidently shipped me an RMA card even though I bought new. (they made it right by refunding me and knocking 25% off my next purchase.)

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Exactly. I buy xfx. I have a friend that buys sapphire cards and he hasn't had any problems.
...the reference cooler is also pretty good. At stock settings, with the fan at 50%, idle temp is around 34c for me, and the highest it gets is 60C during 3Dmark 11. With the fan at 100%, max is 56C.

Tokae said:

I have 3 Sapphire 6970s, before these I had 2 Sapphire 5870s, and before that, 2 Sapphire 4980s. I have never had them die on me. I think they are great, BUT be warned Sapphire's warranty process for RMA is not the best.

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I've been running sapphire cards since the 9800 pro days and have *knocks on wood* never had one die either. In fact, I have a sapphire 9800se flashed to a 9800 pro that still works and my x1900xt probably has close to 50k hours on it.

Cyrix_2k said:

I've been running sapphire cards since the 9800 pro days and have *knocks on wood* never had one die either. In fact, I have a sapphire 9800se flashed to a 9800 pro that still works and my x1900xt probably has close to 50k hours on it.

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I also had an x1950pro AGP card waaay back! its still running a fine also! I sold one of my old towers to a guy about 5 years ago with it in there. I actually got a call from him this July. He said the machine was shutting down and sometimes locking up. I went over there, ran gpu-z and found the card idling(!) at 80c. I took it apart and the card's heatsink was FILLED with dust. after a cleaning it was back to idling around 40c and running fine again.