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Currently interested in upgrading to a Radeon HD5750 with 1 GB, but who's the better manufacturer for that, XFX, HIS, Asus, or Sapphire? Intended price point is $105, but the Sapphire's price expires today.

(Also considering a XFX 5670 with 1 GB for $80.)

XFX or Asus, then Sapphire and then HIS. HIS is always at the bottom of the quality pile.

So flip a coin if you want the XFX or Asus (Does either bundle have something you want) and then look to Sapphire and then with a heavy heart look to HIS.

If you want a level system, XFX/Asus are 7 or 8's(Out of ten) while a Sapphire is a 6 or 7 while an HIS is a 4. It's generic as hell and support will be non-existent.

I hope you don't mind my tacking my question on here; I am also in the market for a new graphics card, does anyone know how EVGA's nvidia cards (specifically in this case a GTX 460) stack up against the competition?

Laughing Mechanicus wrote:I hope you don't mind my tacking my question on here; I am also in the market for a new graphics card, does anyone know how EVGA's nvidia cards (specifically in this case a GTX 460) stack up against the competition?

Personally I've had nothing but good experiences with my EVGA graphics card, but I have a 260. EVGA seems to have an excellent reputation for quality, and their policy that lets you upgrade your graphics card within a few months of purchase is plus their warranty are quite reasonable. When I decided to upgrade from a recently-purchased card to the 260, they granted me an extension on the standard upgrade period because I misplaced my receipt (and found it later in a coat pocket).

Last I knew nVidia cards were considerably more expensive than ATI cards, and the quality wasn't enough higher to necessarily justify the difference -- but I haven't been paying attention to the latest cards since I've had no reason to upgrade the current card.

Laughing Mechanicus wrote:I hope you don't mind my tacking my question on here; I am also in the market for a new graphics card, does anyone know how EVGA's nvidia cards (specifically in this case a GTX 460) stack up against the competition?

EVGA warranties are outstanding their customer service is great and speaking from a speed standpoint they are in the top five. Some years MSI or Gigabyte have the faster card. Some years it's EVGA or Palit and every year you get an outsider like Zotac sneaking into the top three.

From a warranty standpoint however I'll only buy EVGA. The lifetime warranty thing is worth every penny of the extra 5$-10$ on an EVGA card (Note not all EVGA cards come with the lifetime warranty, check your model first). I've only had to use it once but having a Nvidia 260 burn itself down and being offered either another 260 or them offering to send me a Geforce 275 for just 10$ more was enough to sell me on them going forward. I've had a 7800 GTX from EVGA, the 260 and now my 275. When I upgrade to a pair of 460s (If I go that route) I will for sure be picking up EVGA versions of that card.

I strongly recommend waiting another six weeks, particularly before buying an AMD card. The Radeon 6xxx series starts launching in October and the rumor is that either the 6770 or the 6670 will be the first to launch. Even if you decide to go for a 5-series (which is understandable as this gen won't have any major new features, just more performance), the launch of the 6-series should push down prices. I wouldn't bother with Nvidia since the 'bumpgate' scandal (masses of mobile GPUs dying) - apparently they had to revert to the same flawed underfill for the GTX 480 / 470 / 465, and unsurprisingly reported failure rates for those cards are already disturbingly high.

Last I knew nVidia cards were considerably more expensive than ATI cards, and the quality wasn't enough higher to necessarily justify the difference -- but I haven't been paying attention to the latest cards since I've had no reason to upgrade the current card.

The situation is currently reversed; Nvidia have been desperately slashing prices, reportedly selling the entire 4xx series at a net loss, to avoid losing market share. Their current gen products have much worse performance/die area, significantly worse performance/watt, higher defect rates (fewer working dies per wafer) and worse memory interfaces than the competition, the only tools they have left are pricing, bribery (paying games companies to optimise for Nvidia only, sending golden samples to 'preferred' review sites) and bullshit (only Nvidia has 3D, CUDA is unique and awesome, Physx is the future of gaming etc).

It's unfortunate that EVGA only make Nvidia cards, but I do have a nice EVGA motherboard.

Hmm, what's a "best" Radeon manufacturer then? Starglider, I haven't heard anything about the bumpgate thing, please tell me more, and what that had to do with "underfill". Especially surprising to hear considering that the 480's supposed to be their latest series. No idea what PhysX or CUDA are, to be honest.

Laughing Mechanicus, I don't mind. I can't speak for EVGA other than their cards so far not failing (GeForce 8400 GS in dad's desktop, GeForce 9500 GT with 512 MB in mine), but so far I'm thinking of waiting for a price drop as Starglider recommended on the 5-series... although, if $80 gets me a 56xx and $90 a 5750, would you say it's already happening? XFX offers "double lifetime warranty" (parts and labor, limited) according to this, but I couldn't figure out exactly what that entails to justify spending so much more than Asus' model, besides so many "oooh la la" reviews.

P.S. One thing I hate about Newegg? Being swamped with so many deals that I freeze up and can't get myself to get any of them, sometimes resulting in missing out on time-sensitive promotions.

Edward Yee wrote:Hmm, what's a "best" Radeon manufacturer then?

ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, Powercool and XFX are all on roughly equal playing field for Radeon cards. Each generation one of the companies produces a better card then the other guys. Check the generation you want to buy and check out a few reviews. At the moment if you have 1400$ to spend Asus makes a very good (Read insane) card because that's what Asus does. They make a 1000 card run overclock it to beyond lightspeed, throw it's own cooling rig on the card and then sell it at an absurd price so they can have bragging rights. As of the moment in the 5870 area I believe MSI has the best card not due to the card. But for 5850 XFX has the best version. All five of them will be VERY close to each other, it's only every other generation it seems one produces a over the top "best in class" style card. Only EVGA has EVGA lifetime warranties so on the Radeon front the choice is cheaper.

Look at all five of these companies cards. Asus, Gigabyte, Msi, Powercool or XFX, see what the card comes bundled with. Look at the card itself (If you care about that sort of thing) and pick the one with the best bundle/cheapest cost. As with Nvidia cards Sparkle is not bad but they are second rate and their custom service... well they will pick up the phone but don't expect them to speak English. The cards itself have nothing seriously wrong with the design but if it breaks your even if your warranty covers it. And stay the hell away from Biostar home of the putting updates that brick your card BIOS.

Edward Yee wrote: P.S. One thing I hate about Newegg? Being swamped with so many deals that I freeze up and can't get myself to get any of them, sometimes resulting in missing out on time-sensitive promotions.

Yes how dare they give me so many good deal! The nerve of these people!

Edward Yee wrote:Starglider, I haven't heard anything about the bumpgate thing, please tell me more, and what that had to do with "underfill".

The underfill is essentially the glue that sticks the silicon die to the chip package. It is under a surprising amount of mechanical stress, and using the wrong compound will cause the connections between the die and the package to fail, rendering the chip useless. Nvidia made this mistake with numerous batches of their notebook GPUs a couple of years back, as described here, resulting in lots of premature failures and some lawsuits. They moved to another material for a while, but then went back to the same material for the GTX 480, essentially because the thing was designed with no regard for the limitations of the target manufacturing process and is barely able to be produced at all. The 480 missed clock targets by over 25% and all chips have 6% of their shaders permanently disabled; and that was after a six months delay required to make it work at all. Reported failure rates on the 470/480 are already high, although they haven't been out long enough to be confirm the problem is as bad as before. No one seems to know whether the 450 or 460 have the same (probable) underfill issue, Nvidia has refused to comment.

No idea what PhysX

PhysX is a GPU-based physics engine that adds additional cosmetic detail to games. A very few games that Nvidia bribed the developers into using PhysX for. Everyone else uses CPU physics, and the future is DirectCompute physics (which work on any DX11 compliant hardware).

or CUDA are, to be honest.

CUDA is Nvidia's proprietary solution for using GPUs for non-game compute tasks, e.g. video encoding and scientific computation. It was an early pioneer, but is now obsolete and has been effectively replaced by OpenCL, which is supported by AMD, Nvidia, Apple and Intel on GPUs and CPUs.

but so far I'm thinking of waiting for a price drop as Starglider recommended on the 5-series... although, if $80 gets me a 56xx and $90 a 5750, would you say it's already happening?

The Radeon 6770 & 6750 are supposed to be launched in four to five weeks time. If you can wait that long I strongly suspect there will be further price drops in the $100-200 area.