News - Reliability report: Gigabyte top for motherboards, MSI for graphics

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Kingston top for RAM and Samsung makes the most reliable SSDs says Hardware.fr survey.

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Read more.

I think the percentages are low enough on most manufacturers that I'd still prioritise features, cost and warranty length first.

Interesting reading - especially when Google Translate decided to give me the English version. Maybe I'm just weird but I'm actually more interested in the poor performers than the best - and not happy to see a Seagate SSHD and WD Green figure large in the bad-boys for the HDD RMA's.

One startling point though - the rate-of-return on Gigabyte NVidia 780/780Ti's - am I reading it right and it's about 21%?! If so, then what the heck are G'byte doing wrong? :o

Don't think it'll change my opinions much though:
o Still prefer Asus motherboards, (although Gigabyte's in there for a second place);
o Still like my Samsung SSD's - each gen of the 800 series seems to get better technically and better value than the last;
o Disks, like WD and Seagate, but definitely prefer Seagate's SSHD's to WD "Black" drives;
o Memory - Corsair or Crucial - usually the latter;
o Graphics - have had less trouble with NVidia than AMD, tend to go for XFX or Gigabyte.
o Power supplies - used to be Seasonic (long time ago) but defected to Enermax. Last one I bought though, was a Corsair AX which - apart from a squeak/coil-whine - has been a darned good unit. Bought it four years ago and haven't had a moments bother with it (apart from the aforementioned noise - which is actually quite useful on occasion).

Actually Mr Hexus, how about a QOTW on the least reliable, or most unpleasant, piece of hardware in the last couple of years? (Restrict timeframe otherwise I'll be tempted to bitch about the problems with IBM's Deathstar SCSI drives way back in the 80's).

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Originally Posted by crossy

One startling point though - the rate-of-return on Gigabyte NVidia 780/780Ti's - am I reading it right and it's about 21%?! If so, then what the heck are G'byte doing wrong? :o

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It's 10% from what I can see. And just one model. Compared to 10.88% for a gainward model and 7.88% for an MSI model, so nothing clearly attributed to gigabyte.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

It's 10% from what I can see. And just one model. Compared to 10.88% for a gainward model and 7.88% for an MSI model, so nothing clearly attributed to gigabyte.

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Check the conclusions section, this says:

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Originally Posted by http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-8/conclusion.html

Graphics Cards:

- 20.79% Gigabyte GV-N78TGHZ-3GD
- 7.96% R9 290 Sapphire Radeon Vapor-X OC 11227-0
- 6.01% MSI Radeon R9 290 GAMING
- 5.88% Sapphire Radeon R7 250 2GB DDR3 11215-01
- 5.88% R9 Sapphire Radeon 280X Tri-X 11221-14
- 5.79% Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X OC 11227-00
- 5.45% MSI Radeon R9 290x GAMING
- 5.35% ASUS R9280X-DC2T-3GD5
- 5.17% Sapphire Radeon 290x R9 21226-00

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And later on

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GeFore GTX 780/780 Ti
- 20,79% Gigabyte GV-N78TGHZ-3GD
- 3,93% ASUS GTX780TI-DC2OC-3GD5
- 3,56% Gigabyte GV-N78TOC-3GD
- 3,13% Gainward GeForce GTX 780 Phantom
- 3,13% MSI GeForce GTX 780 Ti GAMING
- 2,94% Gigabyte GV-N780OC-3GD
- 2,18% ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780 OC
- 2,16% MSI GeForce GTX 780 GAMING
- 1,47% ASUS GTX780-DC2OC-3GD5
- 0,81% ASUS ROG POSEIDON-GTX780-P-3GD5

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That said, there doesn't seem to be any sign of XFX cards - maybe these are sent back to XFX directly, rather than going through a dealer RMA? I'm interested (mainly because I've got an XFX card at the moment!) because there seems to be a general belief that XFX produce unreliable kit (although the three XFX cards I've have or had previously have proven to be quite good).

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Originally Posted by crossy

Check the conclusions section, this says:

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How strange. On the graphics card page is says:

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Originally Posted by hardware.fr

GeForce GTX 780/780 Ti
- 10,88% Gainward GeForce GTX 780 Phantom GLH
- 10,00% Gigabyte GV-N78TOC-3GD
- 7,91% MSI GeForce GTX 780 Twin Frozr GAMING
- 4,27% Zotac GeForce GTX 780
- 3,73% Gainward GeForce GTX 780 Phantom
- 3,69% ASUS GTX780-DC2OC-3GD5
- 3,00% ASUS GTX780TI-DC2OC-3GD5
- 2,00% ASUS GTX780TI-3GD5
- 1,55% Gainward GeForce GTX 780 Ti

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Edit: ah - the '20,79% Gigabyte GV-N78TGHZ-3GD' is in italics, which means fewer than 200 sales, so not statistically very rigourous.

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That said, there doesn't seem to be any sign of XFX cards - maybe these are sent back to XFX directly, rather than going through a dealer RMA?

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No XFX has no direct warranty on their cards in the UK & EU it's purely down to retailer.
The lack of any mention of XFX makes me think that the retailer they got the numbers from doesn't stock XFX products

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Edit: ah - the '20,79% Gigabyte GV-N78TGHZ-3GD' is in italics, which means fewer than 200 sales, so not statistically very rigourous.

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Quite true, obviously the site has higher standards than those used by cosmetic companies in their tv ads. ;)

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Originally Posted by Pob255

No XFX has no direct warranty on their cards in the UK & EU it's purely down to retailer. The lack of any mention of XFX makes me think that the retailer they got the numbers from doesn't stock XFX products

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I'm not convinced - I know that under UK law (because it was on a BBC consumer programme recently) that the retailer is the first point of contact, but I thought there were also EU regulations requiring some manufacturer warranty provision. I tried to check XFX's UK support page but - unhelpfully - the page is displaying north american warranty T&C's, (I've got a support call out to get this fixed, be interesting to see if I get any reply from XFX - I'm not holding my breath)

It's brilliant that somebody is doing this. Would be great to see tech news sites of other countries following suit and hopefully plugging some gaps in the data (e.g. EVGA).

My experience of XFX UK returns is pretty old now, must of been 2006 or 2007.

I had to send the card back to the retailer, who tested the card and found it faulty. They then had to send it to XFX for XFX to test it was faulty and either repair it or send out a replacement. The retailer would not just send me out a replacement XFX card from their own stock, it had to be the card XFX returned to them to then return to me. The retailer estimated it was going to take them 1-2 days to do their part and then take XFX 4-6 weeks and I told them to just forget it and went out and bought a new card and I'm not going near an XFX card again.

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Originally Posted by Katar

My experience of XFX UK returns is pretty old now, must of been 2006 or 2007.

I had to send the card back to the retailer, who tested the card and found it faulty. They then had to send it to XFX for XFX to test it was faulty and either repair it or send out a replacement. The retailer would not just send me out a replacement XFX card from their own stock, it had to be the card XFX returned to them to then return to me. The retailer estimated it was going to take them 1-2 days to do their part and then take XFX 4-6 weeks and I told them to just forget it and went out and bought a new card and I'm not going near an XFX card again.

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You should have taken the replacement and just sold it when it finally arrived!

Not very surprising that Gigabyte are top on the motherboard front. Most of their boards are rock solid and hence why they're the ones that are always recommended for hackintosh builds. Not as feature rich though as their competitors but its easy pickings when everyone else are building boards that have hardware conflicts and a ton of bios updates just to get them to work.

Not convinced by MSI though as I've had one dodgy MSI motherboad and 2 dodgy graphic cards over the years. Both died just after warranty ran out unfortunately.

What a load of BS!
ASUS is the no.1 for motherboards! Q-FAN is implemented in BIOS.
Gigabyte mobos need software running on Windows startup to control fan speed

Lol - say what you really think! :-)

Actually I agree with you. My last two boards have been Asus because the features have been better than Gigabyte boards and lower priced but I have used Gigabyte boards. They are well built and can understand why Gigabyte has the reputation it has. But personally never had an issue with an Asus board.

Have also built 4 ASrock systems as well and they were all solid systems at a bargain price. Personally though I'd stay away from ECS and Biostar as I've been burnt in the past and I can't be bothered RMA'ing stuff.

Still remember a few years back I was kitting out a LAN centre (back when they were popular and profitable) and bought 40x WD 40GB hard drives, 75% failure rate within a week!

Only other item I had more than occasional trouble with was LiteOn CDRW drives - 3 separate drives over 2 years decided to feast on my discs instead of reading them.

Same here with Lite-On writers. Also had problems with Pioneers / Plextors (I forget which). I'd only ever use Samsung or ASUS writers now.

MSI doesn't surprise me because I've had excellent experiences with them. Ancient MX460 from over a decade ago (red PCB and gold cooler) is still running in my friend's parents' old XP machine, plugged into the red MSI mobo I bought at the same time!

I had a XFX GTX 280 give up on me after only 2 years of relatively light service which is why I would never buy another.

Bought an MSI GTX 480 back in mid 2010 and it is still going strong 4 1/2 years later which shows how good MSI components are (claimed military grade on the box) as the 480 runs stupidly hot at 90-95° C and this card has taken a ton of punishment, I ran it overclocked for 3 years straight before sellnig it to my brother who has it running in a very poorly ventilated case, gaming constantly on it for the last 1 1/2 years!

My GA-Z77-DS3H has served me well for now. Had it for 4 months