ATI Question

[RufusKing]

I have seen a load of people talking about there ATI cards, and when I was searching for them I noticed you get saphire radeons, and other radeons.... whats the difference, and whats the recomended?

-Rufus

[Austin]

Diffs make VERY little diff, mostly colour, cooling solution and bundle ... certainly for the mid to high-end cards. Look mostly to model number and then price. Rad9600PRO is the best of the current offerings, 9800 if you can afford more. If you can find them 2nd hand the Rad8500, Rad9500PRO and any 9700 are also very good options, 8500 being very close to a GF4TI4200 which is by far nVidia's best offering. Only manu to avoid in Rads is Powercolor, they often use cheap parts and poor build quality ... best to avoid although they don't usually stink as such.

[Platty]

just different people who make the same card. All built from an ATI reference board. The chip and design is the same which ever brand you get. Nvidia also have differnt brands eg. Creative, Leadtek.

Which ever you get you'll get about the same performance.

[telfer12000]

Austin - agree on everything save the comments about Powercolor.

Maybe I've just been lucky but the two cards I've had in the past from Powercolor have performed slighty above average and they normally cost a bit below average. I think the problem with Powercolor is that (allegedly) they make different versions of the same card for different international markets and there are a lot of lower spec cards intended for eastern europe sold on ebay and other places(allegedly on both counts).

[Platinum]

Tyan cards are the only ones that are different featuring Hardware monitoring.

Performace wise there all about the same, I have a connect 3d 9800PRO 256MB and im very happy with it

[RufusKing]

sounds like its like buying duty free smokes..... go to another country where its cheap as anything as they are rougher then drug addict prostitute with herpes offering a free ride when she hasnt washed for a month and its her time of the month, and she hasnt realised... (i'll stop before I take that one too far)

[jon bda]

Originally posted by RufusKing
(i'll stop before I take that one too far)

Please...before my breakfast reapppears...

[TomWilko]

Originally posted by RufusKing
sounds like its like buying duty free smokes..... go to another country where its cheap as anything as they are rougher then drug addict prostitute with herpes offering a free ride when she hasnt washed for a month and its her time of the month, and she hasnt realised... (i'll stop before I take that one too far)

Lol, bit of a strange thing to start going on about! I thought this thread was distinguishing Radeons, which i now know a bit more about

[RufusKing]

sorry dude..... I was pretty tired when I posted that message.... I tend to post odd messages at 3 in the morning..... its a bad habit of mine

[Bindibadgi]

Originally posted by RufusKing
sounds like its like buying duty free smokes..... go to another country where its cheap as anything as they are rougher then drug addict prostitute with herpes offering a free ride when she hasnt washed for a month and its her time of the month, and she hasnt realised... (i'll stop before I take that one too far)

Sounds like experience talking there..

IMO built by ati cards are better than powered by ati. Ive always found this to be a general trend. No doubt others will disagree though.

[steve threlfall]

Originally posted by Bindibadgi
Sounds like experience talking there..

IMO built by ati cards are better than powered by ati. Ive always found this to be a general trend. No doubt others will disagree though.

yeah i think most manafacturers just stick by ATI's ref design to the letter though. Unlike nvidia card manafacturers where the companys put a lot of their own input into the card- redesigning parts, making adjuctments to there own spec

[Austin]

The days of low level differences between the diff manus of the same chipset are pretty much over, certainly for gfx cards. Things just move too fast and price sells more than anything, no point doing intensive redesigning or R&D.

Built by ATI cards were most popular in the 8500 days. That's because almost every other 3rd party manu would use slower clocks, cheaper parts, sometimes omitt dual RAMDACs (so no dual display) etc. That's why BBA meant so much back then, almost pointless now though as deviance in the mid-range and up is virtually zero ... and AFAIK BBA are only available in US+C now too.

[Mallus]

Never had a problem with any of my powercolor radeons. Just buy the cheapest you can find

[Austin]

Powercolor are the only Radeon manu known to consistently make under-performing cards and are well known for poor RMA's and customer service. Their Rad9000PRO uses 64bit RAM which is like using SDR! Expect a huge dent in perf. Have a search for Powercolor on some of the other Forums and you'll quickly find that although brand tends to matter little, some are better avoided than others. That's not to say all Powercolor cards are bad, not at all ... just that you'd do best to avoid them.

They aren't the only ones who do this type of thing but most of the time (now-a-days) it's the entry level nVidia cards which are handi-capped by manus. For instance other examples are AOpen's GF4MX440-8X (almost GF2mx400 speed), Asus' (IIRC) FX5200 (20% slower), AOpen's GF4TI4200_128MB (very cheap RAM), Evga's 4200_64MB (15% slower RAM) and some of Gainward's non Golden Sample cards are either underclocked or use poor components.