QOTW: Which AIB makes the best graphics cards?

[Myss_tree]

Sapphire ... solid well made cards and pretty quiet. Even under load the increase in noise is not an unbearable whine.

[=assassin=]

I had an XFX HD5850 last a very long time, I bought it for £234 in 2010, and only upgraded in 2016 as it was falling way behind on performance, but it was still working, so it was great for reliability. I quite liked the cooler on it too, it seemed fairly quiet considering the class of card it was at the time. I'm not sure how current XFX cards stand though, as I don't see much of them anymore. I'm currently using an EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC 6Gb, and I like the look of it, its size and the fact the fan doesn't need to come on much. Yet to see if it stands the test of time though. I've had Leadtek cards in the past, but I had issues with them, no wonder I don't see any of their stuff around any more.

[philehidiot]

I've found it's pretty hard to get one that's actually bad these days. My approach is therefore to buy the cheapest one which has the GPU I want. I don't tend to overclock GPUs anymore as the end result is often only a few FPS and just not worth the risk or hassle. I used to push them or buy factory overclocked but these days I struggle to see the point so much. Maybe I'm just getting old and boring.

Warranties are all covered by the Sale of Goods Act (Now the Consumer Rights Act, similar thing but SOGA is still in place for goods purchased before September 2015) which mean that they all come with good warranties. My gut feeling is that EVGA may have better warranties than are required by law but that's probably an opinion influenced by good marketing rather than objectively true.

End result is that I don't see any point in spending significantly more on a card when the GPU itself is the same. Yes the power delivery system might not be quite as skookum but if you're not overclocking it then what's the point? It's still going to be in spec and still has to meet durability criteria. I'm looking now at Overclockers website and you can get a 1070 for £329.99. One with a decent overclock is nearly £400 which is also where the 1070Tis start. So you could buy an overclockable card and pay more for the quality cooler, components, etc or you could buy a base model up which surely will be much more likely to produce better results? I've had factory overclocked cards fail on me before now - just because they're overclocked from the factory doesn't mean they're not losing reliability as a result of the OC. Indeed some of that price increase may well be to support the higher failure / return rate.

Paying more for the card gets madder when you look at the 1070Ti. There's one for just under £400 (Palit) and an EVGA one for £530. Same clock speeds. I know why this is, etc but how does overclock potential translate into ~30% extra cost? Especially when (you guessed it) the 1080s start at £470...

[eHM]

Sapphire for AMD.

My R9 290 Tri-x OC is still kicking ass OC'd, and you've reminded me I should probably re-paste it.

[QuorTek]

Prefere ASUS for both competitors... had the most relieability with that brand funny enough as it is... but not really a fanboy whenever it get to it... would go EVGA and Saphire as well, my concerns is mostly the base price that team red and green put out as it is, and also not to happy about the trend with prices keeping on going up.

[Strawb77]

nobody seems to have mentioned gigabyte yet.

personally i agree with many posters here that sapphire nails amd cards, and they are my go-to now.

[the_Unforgiven]

EVGA or Sapphire depending on Nvidia or GPU

-copied from MLyons post, 'cause he is right & I fell lazy ATM

[the_Unforgiven]

AMD - do'h