Opinions on companies..

[Impetus27]

I've been looking to pick up a new card and I've got it narrowed down to a couple of choices.

Currently I'm leaning most towards the Radeon 9700 Pro. It seems to offer close to 9800 pro performance and just a touch cheaper.

The other cards I was looking at were the Radeon 9600 XT if I can get it at a really good price, and the GeForce 5900 ultra if I can get it at a much cheaper price than the 9700 pro.

I've read alot of suggestions about companies to stay away from, what are some companies people have had good experiences with? Sapphire? Built by ATI? Powercolor?

Thanks in advance!
Impetus

 

[cleeve]

Saphire, built by Ati, Gigabyte, Hercules are good.

Powercolor, and Gigacube are bad. If you bought one it wouldn't be the end of the world, but generally they use lower quality components, so there's a higher chance of failure and a lower chance of getting a good overclock.

For the record, my first powercolor died quickly, but to their credit Powercolor replaced it in a month for me... for a $20 replacement fee.
Second card is holding strong though.

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9500 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(hardmodded 9500, o/c 322/322)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>2600+</b></font color=red> <i>(o/c 2400+ w/143Mhz fsb)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,055</b></font color=red>

 

[jmecor]

SAPPHIRE is the most popular and good choice.

Go with the 9700 PRO or 9600 XT.

<b>MY RIG</b>
<font color=purple> INTEL P4 2.0GHZ | NVIDIA GEFORCEFX 5200 64MB | 256MB DDR266 SDRAM | INT. AUDIO | SEAGATE 7200.7 40GB HDD | LG 15" CRT | WIN98SE</font color=purple>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The only thing I'd add to Cleeve's reply would be that ASUS is a good choice for the R9600XT, they weren't around the ATI camp for the early years (pre XT).

You may also want to lookf for an FX5900XT/SE/LX model which has a sticker price of an R9600XT/FX5700U, but outperforms both pretty well under 'normal' conditions.

Just some more fuel for the fire.


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