Question AMD: Brand vs brand, type vs type, what does it mean and does it matter? (Longest survivability+budget)

[Phil_33]

Hi, so last time around, I just bought the xfx RX590.
Later on I came to the conclusion that after seeing a review of gamers nexus, I knew I made a mistake.
Not the greatest card at all. My own experience: Fans are noisy as well as the coil whine. Fans are constantly running on max speed when on load. It's even undervolted, the fanspeedcurve is adjusted,... I tried everything with this card and I hate it!
So this time around, since I need a new upgrade anyway, I wanted to do it the right way. Watched reviews and all and so in the near future (around december ish), I want to buy the 7700xt or a 6800 depending on which one has the longest survivability(?)
But I don't know which brand, and which type I should take.
It's gonna be used purely for gaming but I edit a video once in a while on shotcut and I also stream via discord.

I heard alot of good things about sapphire and Power colour. But people are making good reviews about XFX again as well.
How is XFX? Did they step up their game in the mean time? Does the type (SWFT, MERC,...) mean anything?
Sapphire pulse seems to be really good just like the Power Collour hellhound or red devil.
Whats the difference between them? (hellhound/red devil)
I don't want my next gpu to make alot of noise (as I heard enough already ) as cool as possible.
Price is 500 euro's btw.
And I'm looking to game freesync 1080p 144hz and later on 1440p 144hz
My system now is:
Specs
i7 6700 non k (2015)
Z170 gaming a msi (2015)
16gb ram ddr4 2100 speed (2015)
Arctic cooler 34r
1tb, ssd (for games) (2022), spare 1,5tb hdd (2012 but not in use anymore), 240gb ssd (for windows) (2015)
XFX rx590 8gb VRAM (downvolted) (2018)
Corsair rmx 750w 2021 (2022)
Fractal design meshify 2 (2022)
Display: LG 24GM79G 24inch 1080p 144hz (2019)

Games
Currently: Horizon Zero Dawn, Forza Horizon 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Warframe, Destiny 2,...
Future (looking to play this in max settings at 70-144fps/hz): aaa games like Starfield, Horizon Forbidden West, GTA 6,...

 

[Dj0gany]

I own a Sapphire Nitro+ Vega 56 8GB HMB2.
Only "bad" thing i can say about it is that the coil whine can be heard at bigger load. For example, when i play Forza Horizon 5 on ultra settings, i can slightly hear it from my headphones, but again, my PC is 30cm away from my ear, and the side panel has a open cut through design for a side panel case fan, so its not a fully closed panel, case is cooler master HAF X btw. Only time i can really hear it is when im benchmarking it in lets say Unigine Superposition, thats when its the loads, simply because its on max load and draws the max power.
The design is perfect, clean, lots of customizable RGB options, silent fan operation, which don't turn until the GPU surpasses 55C, and i've never seen it go above 65C, even in benchmarks. Really good card and i truly recommend the brand, because its always been in the shadows of lets say ROG or MSI/GIGABYTE, the big brands.
But coil whine is present on most of the RX cards of that era, you simply cant help it, and i knew about the coil whine issue even before i bought the card, so it doesnt bother me at all. But the card is BIG and bulky, which helps with sorting out the cooling issue, but it might have some issues fitting in mid-towers, but a card like that should fit in your Meshify 2 without a problem. Draws 220W max through 2x 6+2 PCIe connectors. Here is how it looks in my PC with my custom vertical mounting kit (case is currently in a messy state):

https://imgur.com/a/MGm9go0

View: https://imgur.com/gallery/MGm9go0

On monday im swapping it for a ROG VEGA 64, simply because the ROG one will look better vertically mounted, as it has really cool LEDs on the side where the fans are located, a im slowly building a ROG theme for my PC , so it will match perfectly.
Back to the topic, coil whine is something you simply cant avoid/fix, other than reducing your framecap, or undervolting your GPU, you simply have to cope with it. On some cards its loud, on some cards you can barely hear it, so far, the XFX 7700XT has little to no coil whine that is audible, judging from reviews. Features a good 3 fan cooling design, so you dont have to worry about that, as long as your case airflow is good enough, which it is in the Meshify.

Does the type (SWFT, MERC,...) mean anything

MERC series is a bit better simply because of the factory boosted clock speed in comparison to SWFT series, but i dont see any SWFT or MERC RX 7700 XT cards on the market, just QICK, which is really good on its own.
I have no experience with PowerColor GPU's, but from reviews that i've seen everyone recommends them.
I say either go for a Sapphire Nitro series one, or XFX, simply speaking from experience, someone might have a different opinion ofcourse.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

sapphire...Power Color...XFX

all of these brands that you mention make varying models of cards.
some with cheaper cooling, some with or without LED effects, some lower quality models with just overall cheapest options to cut prices, and some with even better than the stock cooling that AMD or Nvidia offer, etc.

with any specific card model you're looking into you will need to do specific research regarding it's overall quality.
check multiple customer reviews on multiple retail sites, check for professional or higher-rated non-pro reviews posted around, and ask on sites like this.

you may also need to take measurements of the inside of your current case to ensure that you have space for any specific cards and that they will have direct access to cool intake airflow.

I want to buy the 7700xt or a 6800 depending on which one has the longest survivability

i would say neither of these are going to be able to handle >/=120fps @ 1440p with highest in-game settings on the most demanding games at this moment and definitely will not be able to for the future of gaming.

 

[Phil_33]

I own a Sapphire Nitro+ Vega 56 8GB HMB2.
Only "bad" thing i can say about it is that the coil whine can be heard at bigger load. For example, when i play Forza Horizon 5 on ultra settings, i can slightly hear it from my headphones, but again, my PC is 30cm away from my ear, and the side panel has a open cut through design for a side panel case fan, so its not a fully closed panel, case is cooler master HAF X btw. Only time i can really hear it is when im benchmarking it in lets say Unigine Superposition, thats when its the loads, simply because its on max load and draws the max power.
The design is perfect, clean, lots of customizable RGB options, silent fan operation, which don't turn until the GPU surpasses 55C, and i've never seen it go above 65C, even in benchmarks. Really good card and i truly recommend the brand, because its always been in the shadows of lets say ROG or MSI/GIGABYTE, the big brands.
But coil whine is present on most of the RX cards of that era, you simply cant help it, and i knew about the coil whine issue even before i bought the card, so it doesnt bother me at all. But the card is BIG and bulky, which helps with sorting out the cooling issue, but it might have some issues fitting in mid-towers, but a card like that should fit in your Meshify 2 without a problem. Draws 220W max through 2x 6+2 PCIe connectors. Here is how it looks in my PC with my custom vertical mounting kit (case is currently in a messy state):

https://imgur.com/a/MGm9go0

View: https://imgur.com/gallery/MGm9go0

On monday im swapping it for a ROG VEGA 64, simply because the ROG one will look better vertically mounted, as it has really cool LEDs on the side where the fans are located, a im slowly building a ROG theme for my PC , so it will match perfectly.
Back to the topic, coil whine is something you simply cant avoid/fix, other than reducing your framecap, or undervolting your GPU, you simply have to cope with it. On some cards its loud, on some cards you can barely hear it, so far, the XFX 7700XT has little to no coil whine that is audible, judging from reviews. Features a good 3 fan cooling design, so you dont have to worry about that, as long as your case airflow is good enough, which it is in the Meshify.

MERC series is a bit better simply because of the factory boosted clock speed in comparison to SWFT series, but i dont see any SWFT or MERC RX 7700 XT cards on the market, just QICK, which is really good on its own.
I have no experience with PowerColor GPU's, but from reviews that i've seen everyone recommends them.
I say either go for a Sapphire Nitro series one, or XFX, simply speaking from experience, someone might have a different opinion ofcourse.

I wonder if XFX has stepped up their game in terms of cooling and noise.
It's a 500 euro's card so this has to be right. Allthough, I have this XFX 590 card since it came out in 2018 so this is also a very long time.
They say that you need to change the thermalpaste of the card, but I don't have the knowledge of that nor do I want to know...
The thing is, sapphire has great support though. And everyone says sapphire is like the best in terms of cooling and durability and so on. But on the other hand, I've found a video that suggested that sapphire had 1 of the noisiest ones. XFX and power collour made less noise. Also I believe the XFX's frame is made out of plastic, don't know how sapphire and power collour are.
Anyway, I would go with the sapphire pulse though since that one is cheaper for me and I don't need the extra boost anyway.
I do want great cooling and little to no noise with a solid build that has durability.

 

[Phil_33]

all of these brands that you mention make varying models of cards.
some with cheaper cooling, some with or without LED effects, some lower quality models with just overall cheapest options to cut prices, and some with even better than the stock cooling that AMD or Nvidia offer, etc.

with any specific card model you're looking into you will need to do specific research regarding it's overall quality.
check multiple customer reviews on multiple retail sites, check for professional or higher-rated non-pro reviews posted around, and ask on sites like this.

you may also need to take measurements of the inside of your current case to ensure that you have space for any specific cards and that they will have direct access to cool intake airflow.

i would say neither of these are going to be able to handle >/=120fps @ 1440p with highest in-game settings on the most demanding games at this moment and definitely will not be able to for the future of gaming.

Ok thank you. I want a card with good cooling and little to no noise and most of all a card that has stability and durability.
Maybe I need to re-edit that. Because it's actually meant to be entry level 1440p. For 1440p 144hz I would need to go for the 7800xt and I don't want to spend that extra money since I still have an 1080p 144hz monitor.
Question also is, is the 6800 gonna survive longer then the 7700xt?

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

I wonder if XFX has stepped up their game in terms of cooling and noise.

XFX does offer some very nice options for both Nvidia & AMD manufactured cards.

i had a couple older XFX ATI cards that had much better cooling and noise ratio than many others available.

they've never actually stepped their game up or down.
they've always offered both low-end and high-end models of the same series of cards.
you likely just had one of the less quality models that ended up with such noise issue(s).

 

[Phil_33]

XFX does offer some very nice options for both Nvidia & AMD manufactured cards.

i had a couple older XFX ATI cards that had much better cooling and noise ratio than many others available.

they've never actually stepped their game up or down.
they've always offered both low-end and high-end models of the same series of cards.
you likely just had one of the less quality models that ended up with such noise issue(s).

I see. Thanks! Yea after seeing a review, RX590 was not so good in general. 5700xt was much better. Anyway, I'll try and look up some specific things about the cards then.

 

[Avro Arrow]

The truth is that for every negative review of any video card brand, I could show you ten positive reviews of the same brand. The RX 590 is old as dirt at this point and is about the same potency as an R9 Fury (from 2015). I would say that the age of the card is far more significant in this case than the brand of the card.

I have owned cards branded Albatron, ASRock, Dell, Gigabyte, JXZ, Palit, PNY, Sapphire and XFX. The only card that I ever had that was defective out of the box was an XFX. Does that mean XFX is garbage? No, because there's context to add. I have owned SIX cards made by XFX (triple the number that I've owned of any other brand) and the previous five cards were perfect.

Now, check this out:

I took this picture a few weeks ago and both of these XFX cards still work perfectly despite the fact that I bought them almost 15 years ago. My first XFX card was actually a GeForce 6200 AGP and it died long after I replaced it with a Palit GeForce 8500 GT (which incidentally also still works). I threw it out without a second thought because it had long since outlived its warranty.

At the end of the day, the brand doesn't matter. I worked at Tiger Direct and I never saw any brand having more defective parts than any other. The brand with the most defectives changed monthly and the difference between what could be called "the best" and what could be called "the worst" was less than 3% which means that it was well within the margin of error.

Choose your card brand based on whatever you want in a card, be it the best price or the most RGB. I personally won't touch anything by MSi because of a really bad experience that I had with their "customer service" and I don't buy ASUS because they're always overpriced (although I do have an ASUS craptop).

 

[ocer9999]

Ok thank you. I want a card with good cooling and little to no noise and most of all a card that has stability and durability.
Maybe I need to re-edit that. Because it's actually meant to be entry level 1440p. For 1440p 144hz I would need to go for the 7800xt and I don't want to spend that extra money since I still have an 1080p 144hz monitor.
Question also is, is the 6800 gonna survive longer then the 7700xt?

Well, if you want the best cooling and for the new series, PowerColor did a great job with their 7800 and 7700 XT's. Check out Tech Power UP for the Hellhound 7800XT, not only is one of the lowest temperatures, it runs fans at ultra low RPMs making it the most quiet at default mode.

Also they have a page that compares all the cards cooling efficiency and PowerColor is the most efficient.

 

[Phil_33]

Well, if you want the best cooling and for the new series, PowerColor did a great job with their 7800 and 7700 XT's. Check out Tech Power UP for the Hellhound 7800XT, not only is one of the lowest temperatures, it runs fans at ultra low RPMs making it the most quiet at default mode.

Also they have a page that compares all the cards cooling efficiency and PowerColor is the most efficient.

I already noticed. I think indeed I'll be going for the hellhound instead. Thank you for mentioning.