Video Card Rating

[Khalil]

This is a similar post like I did for the motherboards but for Video card brands.

Blue Excellent Quality with Superior tech support and Fast RMA Service.
Green Excellent Quality With not so good Customer Support and slow RMA service
Purple Mid Quality with Good Customer support and fast RMA service
Black Mid Quality with Poor Customer Support and bad RMA Service
Red Very Poor Quality with Very Poor Customer support and non-existent RMA service "you are on your own"


ATI (workstation cards, not for gaming)
Matrox (workstation cards, not for gaming) rating per glc
ASUS
Diamond
EVGA
Sapphire
HIS

Gigabyte
PNY
MSI
Sparkle

Biostar
PowerColor
VisionTek

Galaxy

Apollo
Zotac
XFX
Jaton
Chaintech
BFG (OUT OF BUSINESS, DO NOT BUY, NO MORE RMA'S, IF IT BREAKS YOU EAT IT)



I have never used Sparkle or Matrox so I have no rating for them

[chuck4456]

MATROX has been around for a long time.
Most of their stuff isn't for gaming or end-user builder systems.
IIRC, Matrox stuff is used in servers and workstations in which only minimal graffix is required.
GLC can probably tell you abit more.

[glc]

I have stickied the thread, if you need your post edited after 12 hours, please contact any moderator.

I have never had to use Matrox customer support, but I would put the cards themselves in the excellent quality group. Matrox specializes in professional graphics and for that market, they are OUTSTANDING. However, they are terrible gaming cards.

[mjkovis]

I am a bit surprised at the fact you have ranked XFX so low. I have used their cards a few times along with recommending them to others and have NEVER had an issue. I haven't heard too many bad things from reviews either. This is really pertaining to the nVidia side though, not ATI.

I have also used MSI for a long, long, long time and they have never given me a problem. Their customer support has always been EXTREMELY awesome and fast about anything I have ever needed. I remember at one point, when I had my 6600 GT's running in SLi, both heatsink fans went out around the same time... I talked to MSI customer support and they shipped both for FREE, very, very quickly.

I will agree, Matrox makes an awesome and quality video card for a workstation! The first PC I built I put one of their cards in it and was pleased. Although, definitely not meant for gaming, but at the time it did run all the new games without a problem!

P.S. - And yes, I know this is strictly an opinion, just sharing mine as well. Don't want to get into any heated debates.

[Rev_pizzaguy]

You forgot Leadtek.

[Khalil]

Never used Leadtek, maybe glc can shed some light for us on those.

[jdeb]

elsa

http://www.elsa.com/index.asp

[glc]

Leadtek and Elsa are no longer serious players.

XFX is a division of Pine Technologies, which is PC Chips. Need I say more?

PNY's video cards are (maybe were) made by MSI.

[tomster2300]

Originally Posted by glc Leadtek and Elsa are no longer serious players. XFX is a division of Pine Technologies, which is PC Chips. Need I say more? PNY's video cards are (maybe were) made by MSI.

I had no idea they were a division of PC Chips.

I've used a powercolor card in the past and it was top notch. I never had to deal with their customer service though. I too would have ranked XFX higher though. My card has been rock solid for about two years now.

[liambl]

Most of those manufacturers just rebrand the same PCB from the same factory as theirs (AFAIK Gigabyte and Asus make their own, and maybe EVGA) and hence have the same quality, or so I've heard from a few high up people. The only real way to rate a board partner is by their support, which is irrelevant anyway as I live in New Zealand and most manufacturers refuse to do business with me in terms of an RMA so I just deal with the retailer (easier and faster anyway)

Back to the point, I've never had an issue with XFX, but have with the likes of Asus (quite badly). XFX's bundles are epic win and they overclock well too.

Oh and, ASUS support excellent? Jeez where have I been the past few decades.

[Force Flow]

Quality hardware is important. If the hardware doesn't do its job, then what good is it, regardless of the level of support?

[liambl]

I just cant get down XFX's rating in this thread. Pop over to many of the overclocking and enthusiast forums and a lot of members recommend XFX next to EVGA as their top choice. Where is the author to this thread getting this info from anyway?

[glc]

The author of this post is a professional system builder with around 10,000 builds under his belt. He is providing this information from personal experience dealing with the various brands.

Just so you know, XFX is a division of Pine Technologies, which is a PC Chips company. Never has been high quality.

[liambl]

They may have only used 1 XFX card in that 10,000 builds, and that card may have been bad. From the perspective of a fair few people on various forums XFX is regarded as a high quality brand, me included. AFAIK XFX just rebrands reference boards and the production of these boards has nothing to do with PCChips. If anything the only thing of low quality is the sticker, which doesn't seem to be the case.

[Khalil]

I tried XFX on 2 different large builds, one of them was for 68 systems, we had 32 fail while burning them in. I sent them all back to distribution and got Asus instead.
I tried them again with a small build of 40 systems or so, more than half were faulty. Thanks for your input liambl however I would not give a company bad rap from one bad card.
As far as people recomending them that is the same as people recomending Rosewill on newegg.com and giving their products 5 eggs. Cheap garbage for people who don't want to spend much.

Edit: Would like to add that we also repair a lot of computers, we see all kinds of video cards failing but XFX is one of the highest we see coming in with total failure.

[liambl]

You must be one unlucky person when it came to XFX. The only debiltating problem with my XFX GTX260 is coil buzzing/whining which is an extremely common problem on all brands of GTX200 series (thanks NVIDIA). Its so bad I'm thinking of returning it for this, good choice y/n? 50 bucks off as well. The 4800 series uses digital PWM opposed to NVIDIA's crappy whiny/buzzy/screechy/etc analogue PWM and doesn't have these problems.

[Khalil]

That is a great Choice, HIS are good cards, please note the Asus nVidia cards are solid, I rarely ever see issues with those. You realize, there must be a reason why the same spec card from XFX is so much cheaper than BFG or Asus.

[tomster2300]

Originally Posted by liambl You must be one unlucky person when it came to XFX. The only debiltating problem with my XFX GTX260 is coil buzzing/whining which is an extremely common problem on all brands of GTX200 series (thanks NVIDIA). Its so bad I'm thinking of returning it for this, good choice y/n? 50 bucks off as well. The 4800 series uses digital PWM opposed to NVIDIA's crappy whiny/buzzy/screechy/etc analogue PWM and doesn't have these problems.

I just bought this this afternoon. I'm pretty pumped.

[Khalil]

Yep that is a great video card. It is the one I sell most, how can you go wrong at that price?

[liambl]

Well now I have to see about sending this card back, at least that 4870 is quite a lot cheaper than this GTX260, performance should be fairly similar hopefully. Now I have to convince my retailer to go ahead with the exchange. Should explaining that the coil whine is bad enough to cause severe headaches be enough reason for an exchange?

[Khalil]

Depends on how long ago you bought it.

[liambl]

Like 2 days ago...

[Khalil]

He should take it back no problems unless it states specifically on the receipt, no returns or exchanges. I mean for me, I have a no refund policy unless the item is not replaceable but if it was me I would do the exchange and give you the difference back, do you still have the box and all the stuff that came witht he XFX?

[liambl]

Yep everything is still here and in as it was condition. I only took the card out and installed it yesterday.

[Masaki 7-11]

Originally Posted by liambl You must be one unlucky person when it came to XFX. The only debiltating problem with my XFX GTX260 is coil buzzing/whining which is an extremely common problem on all brands of GTX200 series (thanks NVIDIA). Its so bad I'm thinking of returning it for this, good choice y/n? 50 bucks off as well. The 4800 series uses digital PWM opposed to NVIDIA's crappy whiny/buzzy/screechy/etc analogue PWM and doesn't have these problems.

I recently built an AMD Gaming system (the one is my sig) using a HIS 1GB HD4870 with similar specs to the one in the link (the core clock is 20MHz higher, the memory clock is the same) and I was able to get 16,230 3DMarks in 3DMark06. As long as I keep AA off and AF low, I can play pretty much game at 1080p resolution with all the other settings turned to max.

[liambl]

It sure is gona be hard letting this card go, overclocked shaders straight to 1512MHz stable (probably go higher), and I'm pushing damn near 8,000PPD in F@H. I don't think I'll even bother folding on the ATI card if i end up going through with this.

[id10x]

Originally Posted by jdeb kool! i think you will be ok with the zotac though, for what it's worth

khalil are you saying my zotac vga card have 50% chance of not booting up ?

i read this :

Zotac is owned by PC Partner, who also own Sapphire.



so?

[Extremerc12]

While I am inclined to agree with the belief that XFX products aren't very good, their customer service was prompt and fast when my old 9600 died. I have found though, that calling them is no where near as effective as setting up an RMA on their website. Overall, took a week and half for them to get me a new card. Will I ever go back to XFX, the answer to that question is most certainly no.

[Khalil]

Originally Posted by id10x khalil are you saying my zotac vga card have 50% chance of not booting up ? i read this : Zotac is owned by PC Partner, who also own Sapphire. so?

No I never said that. When looking at a video card you have to remember even though the GPU is the same on all of them there are other components on the actual video card, how good are these components will decide how well the card will last. Many of the problems with cheaper video cards is caused by the poor untested memory they use. I cannot give a percentage on what will boot and what won't but I know that a Zotac will have a much higher chance of failure than an Asus, BFG or Diamond video cards. For example, Asus will only use pre-tested and certified memory modules in their video cards, that is not the case with other video card makers.

[id10x]

well i had no choice,, it was the only brand they have in that uk shop i dont even know
what to do if i needed RMA ,, the shop is in another country and there is nothing here
but desert .

but why PC Partner makes good Sapphire and bad zotac ?