What Video Card Should I Buy?

[teds :D]

I have a question - what about manufacturers?

IE Coolermaster vs XFX vs Sapphire vs EVGA etc etc. I've heard they have differing warranties/qualities, some are known to be utter shit and diaf, etc etc.

What are some of the better manufacturers?

never had a problem with XFX or Sapphire. the XFX's tended to run a little hot perhaps. Coolermaster make coolers... don't know anyone personally who builds with them as a gpu

[Zekk Pacus]

Zekk's Far-From-Definitive guide to graphics card manufacturers, off the top of my head and full of personal bias:

ASUS: Great cards but you pay a markup for them. And their high-end cards take up 3 slots, which can be less than ideal. One of the only manufacturers to offer a 3 year warranty on almost all performance cards.
Gigabyte: Last-gen cards were noisy, but fine. Unremarkable really.
MSi: Neck-and-neck with ASUS in the tweakable stakes, tend to be cheaper, I personally think their Twin Frozr design looks the shit. There's some talk of them being noisy, though.
Zotac: They love the voltage tweak and their cards tend to run hotter than others since their voltage tweaks are higher. Personally would avoid.
Sapphire: Decent cards. Nothing spectacular but good pricing. 2 year warranties on most cards.
XFX: Personally would avoid like the plague, not great build quality.
EVGA: EVGA are interesting, they're the only manufacturer off the top of my head who routinely bins and sells several versions of the reference design, with different warranties, overclockability, etc. Their custom designs are batshit crazy, see for example: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw= They're also the only major manufacturer to produce cards with pre-attached waterblocks.
Gainward: Really don't know much about Gainward anymore. Way way back in the days of GeForce 2 to GeForce 4 or so Gainward were the card to buy, but they don't seem to be doing anything fancy right now. Also notable for the amusingly named 'Golden Sample' cards, one of the first real examples of mainstream 'binning' of GPUs according to overclockability.

There are a lot of other manufacturers kicking around. Generally they fall into two tiers, reference design only and reference/own designs. All the ones I named there are punting out both, there are innumerable manufacturers (Palit, PNY, Points of View, Inno3d, Galaxy, Jetway, etc etc) punting out nothing but reference cards. I would generally avoid these - reference designs are nice in that they're generally centrifugal blowers that exhaust all the air out of the case, meaning the case needs less airflow to keep the card cool, but won't perform as well as a good non-reference design in a well-ventilated case. They're also noisier. This only holds-true on high-end cards (HD7970/7950/GTX680/670/580) - mid-range cards, the reference designs tend to be axial fan. There also tends to be more non-reference designs in the midrange, it's cheaper to do.

The golden rules are:
1) Check the warranty status. 3 year is industry golden, but make sure it's proper 3 years and doesn't require registering or anything, as registering can be a right pain in the arse.
2) Design - two large fans is better than one small fan. Will shift more air and do it making less noise. If it's a big card (anything longer than about 8.5" (ladies) and requiring 2 slots or more is a big card) check for things like backplates, rigidity brackets etc. I've seen some big cards (GTX8800 era) that are skewed at big angles now due to lack of reinforcement and a large cooler.
3) Supply chain availability - if your chosen card is only sold on one website and that website is http://www.honestdavesgraphicscards....tyhonestgeezer then chances are it's not all that.
4) Reviews - when in doubt read reviews. As many as possible.

[hXc]

MSi: Neck-and-neck with ASUS in the tweakable stakes, tend to be cheaper, I personally think their Twin Frozr design looks the shit. There's some talk of them being noisy, though.

I have 6970 lightning and I have to say it's super quiet. Also they have no warranty seals on the screws so you can play with them all day long (at least the 6950 TF3 and lightning as I have owned them), and MSI has great support.
Oh and the warranty is still valid if you burn your card 8)

[arian snow]

Gainward is still doing awesome stuff, if you want a really nice (looking) graphics card, the Phantom editions are nice:



Asus have their huge sometimes 3 slot DCU cooler, which should be great.

[Cosmin]

Zekk's Far-From-Definitive guide to graphics card manufacturers, off the top of my head and full of personal bias:

ASUS: Great cards but you pay a markup for them. And their high-end cards take up 3 slots, which can be less than ideal. One of the only manufacturers to offer a 3 year warranty on almost all performance cards.
Gigabyte: Last-gen cards were noisy, but fine. Unremarkable really.
MSi: Neck-and-neck with ASUS in the tweakable stakes, tend to be cheaper, I personally think their Twin Frozr design looks the shit. There's some talk of them being noisy, though.
Zotac: They love the voltage tweak and their cards tend to run hotter than others since their voltage tweaks are higher. Personally would avoid.
Sapphire: Decent cards. Nothing spectacular but good pricing. 2 year warranties on most cards.
XFX: Personally would avoid like the plague, not great build quality.
EVGA: EVGA are interesting, they're the only manufacturer off the top of my head who routinely bins and sells several versions of the reference design, with different warranties, overclockability, etc. Their custom designs are batshit crazy, see for example: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...s%20Family&sw= They're also the only major manufacturer to produce cards with pre-attached waterblocks.
Gainward: Really don't know much about Gainward anymore. Way way back in the days of GeForce 2 to GeForce 4 or so Gainward were the card to buy, but they don't seem to be doing anything fancy right now. Also notable for the amusingly named 'Golden Sample' cards, one of the first real examples of mainstream 'binning' of GPUs according to overclockability.

I`m going to chip in here in addition to what you said.

ASUS - DirectCU is a brainfart when used with small-surface GPU's which have no heatspreader, you get 1 full heatpipe contact and 1/8 of two heatpipes contact => extremely inefficient; the price tag attached is just hilarious, as it's justified but the performance just sucks;

Gigabyte - were the only ones to put out a GTX560Ti with 1GHz core speed as "stock" (SOC edition). They are anything but unremarkable, the power circuits are state of the art - pics here, check the NEC “Proadlizer” there and what it does, never saw that on anything else They do integrate AMD GPUs as well afaik.

MSI - interesting cards, I`d say above ASUS, the TwinFrozr series are really silent and nice; unremarkable clocking policy;

Zotac - have no experience here tbqh

Sapphire - AMD integrators only afaik, not much experience since a X1800XTX a looong time ago.

XFX - were the shiznit some time ago, along with BFG; since they started being exclusive AMD integrators they are a bit "meh" imho; the 7970 is extremely well built, the 7770 is something a bit on the cheap side. Cost is directly linked to quality imho, they are "honestly" priced. I would not choose anything else if I`d go AMD for video.

EVGA - they are good from a warranty pov; custom designs are insane; nice clocked up varieties; I would choose this or Gigabyte tbh as an end user who wants NVIDIA.

Gainward ~= PalIT. Nuff said.




Also as an user that had a 8800GT single slot, I strongly resent anything >2 slots. 3 slots is just freaking insane, I`d rather go full blown retard with water cooling everywhere than 3 slot video air cooled.

[hXc]

check the NEC “Proadlizer” there and what it does, never saw that on anything else

MSI do include them on their non-reference cards, or at least my 6950 and 6970 had them, don't really know about others but they should have them too

[user_31001]

Gainward is still doing awesome stuff, if you want a really nice (looking) graphics card, the Phantom editions are nice:



Asus have their huge sometimes 3 slot DCU cooler, which should be great.

From my experience Gainward are fucking noisy, especialy under load. I couldn't stand my card even with headphone so i sold it to get my current 5770 which was way quieter, might have been an unlucky buy i guess.

[Hast]

speaking of gainward.

A year or so ago I bought a GTX 570 that is really fucking loud. So I decided to buy a new heatsink for it. Heat sink comes in the mail and it does not fit. :/ So someone recommend me a rather silent card that is still quite good, alternatively a card that is rather good that fits a gtx 570 / 580 heat sink. :P

[Gaydai]

Hello,

I am getting a 2nd hand system of a good mate of mine. It is not that flash (Shit Thermal take chassi, GTX 295 card (lol) and one 32 gb SSD) but it is a stable platform to build from with a very good watercooling system, something I have wanted to do for ages because of the challenge.

But that GTX 295 needs to go, period. He even warned me about it being shit. I am looking to spend some 200-250€ on the card itself and then add a water-block to that. That's what got me wondering, what cards & brand would work best for this? I won't use the stock cooler unless I can't get the water running so only paying bigbucks for a better cooler and looks would be a waste. Read that EGVA has cards with built in blocks (as in one of their high-end cards it seems).

I have used Gainward before, had an old GTX8800x the size of a truck, when it burned out I got an XFX which was noisy to say the least. Now running a ASUS GTX 460m in an laptop. That's my experience with cards really.

Aiming for a GTX 570 / Radeon HD7850, both seem to land at the upper part of 250€ which is fine by me.

Any pointers?

[Zekk Pacus]

You generally actually want a reference card rather than a 3rd party card, because the waterblock designers design their blocks for the stock layout rather than 3rd party designs. Yes EVGA make a card with a pre-installed waterblock but it's expensive as all hell. 7850 is a much better buy than a GTX 570, less power usage and generally more overclockable.

I like EK blocks on graphics cards.

[Equium Duo]

I had a GTX 295 and it failed on me...

I was so sad, 2 months outside of warranty. Gigabyte said they would try and fix it for free, they failed. At least they tried (I assume!)

[Gaydai]

When you say reference, we talking the cheaper brands I assume? It is rather hard to find anything other than the generic cards around here (XFX, GeForce, Gainward ,MSI etc). The 7850 is out of stock everywhere but gets the highest ratings for its priceclass so seems to be what I should go for. As far as blocks go I can only get hold of EK blocks for a fair price so that is sorted, the company can get blocks for pretty much every card it seems.

If one would go down a notch, say 560 which I can get a pretty good deal on. Comparing a 560Ti with a GTX 570 HD SOC were the price-diff is 50€ but performance wise they seem to have their own ups and downs, how big is that drop?. Looking at EGVA for reference. I must say I favor Nvidia a bit as I had some pretty weird driver-issues with my old XFX card.

[Zekk Pacus]

When I say reference what I mean is reference design; so for 680 it looks like this http://images.anandtech.com/doci/569...80_F_575px.jpg, 7850 looks like http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5625/7850Reference.jpg

Reference design is generally what waterblock designers design around, ensures all the components fit under the block.

Also forget 560/570; it's last gen, it's powerhungry, it's not worth buying now.

[Gaydai]

So I just stick with the GT295 for awhile and move ahead at a later date? Might aswell. There seems to have once existed some pretty mean looking waterblocks for the 295, sadly I can't find them for sale anywhere. A shame but oh well.

[Zekk Pacus]

Danger Den are still offering both the dual PCB and single PCB versions.

http://www.dangerden.com/store/dd-gtx295-block.html
http://www.dangerden.com/store/dd-gt...ingle_pcb.html

[Tordin Varglund]

AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition "Tahiti XT2" Detailed

http://www.techpowerup.com/167711/AM...-Detailed.html

TL;DR: stock voltage down from 1175mV -> 1020mV, Core speed up from 925MHz -> 1100MHz



I want to see a Lighting model of this so bad

[Bombcrater]

About time too, although the listed clocks and voltages don't look like anything that would need a rework of the GPU. Plenty of vendors are selling overclocked non-reference 79xx cards running below 1000mv already.

[hXc]

About time too, although the listed clocks and voltages don't look like anything that would need a rework of the GPU. Plenty of vendors are selling overclocked non-reference 79xx cards running below 1000mv already.

Aren't they doing it with selected chips? That would mean than this chip can be still tweaked even more on non-reference cards.
I too want to see it on a Lightning card

[Bombcrater]

I'm sure they're using selected chips but overclocked non-ref 79xx cards are both plentiful and cheap, which does suggest AMD is having no trouble getting ones that run in the sweet spot. When I bought my 7950 I just picked the cheapest card I could find with a non-reference cooler and it turned out to have a 10% overclock (800 > 880 core) and runs at 0.946v.

A lot of the chips that aren't so good will end up stockpiled for use a salvage card (7930 or 7890) where enough shader blocks will be turned off that having to run the GPU at higher voltages won't be a problem.

[Gaydai]

After looking around anlot, listening to zekk and finding alot of money to spend I will get a new card to run in my open loop. 360 rad so won't be an issue.

Settled for this:

EGVA gtx 670 Ftw (2048)
Ek Fc680 nickel acetal block ( which should fit afaik)

All in for just under 500€

Sensible?