PowerColor. What's the deal exactly?

[Stewart]

So, PowerColor cards are always that bit cheaper than other 'top' brands, such as Sapphire and the like. What exactly is the deal with them?

Are they underclocked, do they overclock less well? Do they use dodgy RAM, do they have a bad rep?

What exactly is the deal? Do they just flog their cards for a bargain, or are they doing something to the cards to make them less attractive?

Also, what do people think of the Crucial brand of 9800pros?

[Lexeus]

Well apparantly some of the lower end powercolor cards sometimes have corners cut on them, e.g. cheaper RAM, or only 64bit, apparantly, but my Radeon 9000Pro works fine .... it has 3.2ns Ram on it which isn't bad.

[steve-o]

Most places ive looked the 9800 is the same price for powercolor and say hercules, maybe a tenner cheaper. The 9800Pro is only a tenner more expensive than the 9800 at komplett so that might have some cutbacks.

[Austin]

Powercolor are the only Radeon manu that are known to consistently cut corners, not just overall quality but important thing like RAM and clocks as said above. However for the top end cards like the 9800 & 9800PRO you should be more than fine with them, I really can't see even them selling a 9800PRO (£220) that's slower than a 9800 (£210) even if prices are similar. Powercolor work on the principle of selling large quantities for small profits per unit so you should find them a smidge cheaper.

[Lexeus]

Austin, 3.2ns ram on a 9000Pro is good isn't it ? or ok ? what you think ?

[bouncin]

i think u should pm me and tell me how good that hitachi deskstar is (please)

[TiG]

Originally posted by Austin
Powercolor are the only Radeon manu that are known to consistently cut corners, not just overall quality but important thing like RAM and clocks as said above. However for the top end cards like the 9800 & 9800PRO you should be more than fine with them, I really can't see even them selling a 9800PRO (£220) that's slower than a 9800 (£210) even if prices are similar. Powercolor work on the principle of selling large quantities for small profits per unit so you should find them a smidge cheaper.

PowerColor is the Value brand - just think of it like that, considuring its not power color that are making the board and its ATI - i wouldn't have any concerns about stuff like this.

You'll probably find that they don't spend much money on advertising and its the reason they can reduce prices, they also don't spend any time or money on making the card pretty - its bog standard colour with a rebadged fan.

TiG

[Spud1]

Originally posted by Lexeus
3.2ns ram on a 9000Pro is good isn't it ? or ok ?

3.2ns ram is very good for a gcard, normally its 5ns ram thats used; it makes a huge diff when you have lots of ram on the card (eg 256)

[Austin]

3.2ns on a 9000PRO is good as its technical spec would allow 312.5mhz (625mhz inc DDR) from the usual stock RAM clock of 275mhz (550mhz DDR). The core should also be 275mhz and many epopel find them happy around 300mhz. Still 300/313 is still only likely to match a Rad8500LE @ 250/250, still that is good perf! 5ns is the RAM you should expect to find on crippled 8500 and the 9000, 9100 & 9200 cards which use clocks around 230/200 - 250/200. That is VERY poor and kills the card's potential.

[[GSV]Trig]

My R8500 is 3.6ns, how fast can I clock it?

[Trickle]

5/100 = 200mhz - i.e. no faster than ddr3200 - hence why you see 256mb on elcheapo cards that are too slow to even warrent 128mb.

3.6/100 = 300 ish mhz, but you tend to alway get a little more so you should still be able to get >600 mem speeds.

[Austin]

Basically take 1000 then divide by the NS to derive its maximum technical speed, double it if it is DDR RAM. So 1000/3.6=277mhz (555mhz DDR) but rem that's only its technical limit ... it can easily fail to achieve that or just as often exceed it. Esp so if it or you add voltage to the RAM but then that carries additonal concerns and complications. Bottom line is that the only way to know is to o/c your particular card, just use small steps and test each time, when you find the limit back off a little for the long term.