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Has Sapphire suddenly become a premium brand?

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
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It was pointed out to me today that the Sapphire 1GB 7850 now costs the same as a 2GB Asus or MSI.

Meanwhile the Sapphire 2GB 7850 is the same price as some 7870s.

I always thought that Sapphire was a bit of a cheapo brand. Are prices just off-kilter atm or have Sapphire done something to deserve these orbital price tags?
 
i was a huge sapphire fanboy,there vapor x cards are great,but the 7k series cards seem to fall short of msi and gigabyte imo,hear a lot of coil whine issues with sapphire 7970 cards too

i own an an msi 7850 and tbh its been great plus 3 year warranty but that depends how well msi are at honouring it,id rate gigabyte #1 on warranty/rma
 
No, Sapphire don't really make that many premium products, per say, like MSI do witht he TF coolers. They don't have a great warranty either...
 
MSI have been my choice fro a while now and a brand I'd suggest to others.
I've never had to make use of their warranty tho so can't comment if it's any good.
Not even sure if they have a UK RMA centre.
 
The only minus for sapphire was the coil wine from a batch or two, they make great hardware but warranty isn't so special dependent on country. The Toxic and VAPOR-X brands are really good and are as good as any out there.

EVGA on the other hand is the exact opposite of Sapphire (Great support but not so good Heatsink/fan etc, for the money).

Everyone's experience will be different with each brand or company.
 
Cleeecooo said:
No, Sapphire don't really make that many premium products, per say, like MSI do witht he TF coolers. They don't have a great warranty either...
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Your so wrong!

Sapphire make some of the highest end products, 6GB Toxic 7970, 6GB Vapor-X, they just make there top-end stuff in very limited numbers.

They are also AMD's European number 1 partner, as they sell more AMD Radeon based cards than any other partner. In the far east, I believe TUL Group is the largest.

Sapphire's warranty is OK, but OcUK honor the 2yr warranty, so its excellent.

Sapphire is also OcUK's no.1 selling VGA brand right now out of all partners including the NV ones, they are huge and their cards are always slightly more than others due to their coolers which in general are excellent.
 
I was always under the impression Sapphire were considered premium, up there with Gigabyte and MSI with the likes of XFX being considered the lower end.
 
I've always thought of them as low end. Their reference cards were always amongst the cheapest.years ago. Always liked the toxic cards but have always had difficulties with locked voltages. Maybe they would be happier with nvidia cards :)
 
Gibbo said:
Your so wrong!

Sapphire make some of the highest end products, 6GB Toxic 7970, 6GB Vapor-X, they just make there top-end stuff in very limited numbers.

They are also AMD's European number 1 partner, as they sell more AMD Radeon based cards than any other partner. In the far east, I believe TUL Group is the largest.

Sapphire's warranty is OK, but OcUK honor the 2yr warranty, so its excellent.

Sapphire is also OcUK's no.1 selling VGA brand right now out of all partners including the NV ones, they are huge and their cards are always slightly more than others due to their coolers which in general are excellent.
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Deary me... for some reason I thought Powercolour made the vapour X and the toxic. Genuine facepalm.

OcUK may honour the full 2 years, but with all due respect to OcUK, the RMA service really does need some common sense put into it. It's really frustrating when you guys simply won't send things from stock when you have loads in stock and insist on waiting the 28 working days or until you get it back from the manufacturer. I know you guys are a business and you need to make money and I have no idea how much of what products you sell, but if it's 6 months in to the product's life and you're sitting on plenty of stock, will it really hurt to get rid of a single unit to help an RMA go much faster? I apologise if I've got any of the above wrong, but this is the impression I got the last time I had to RMA something through you guys.
 
Cleeecooo said:
Deary me... for some reason I thought Powercolour made the vapour X and the toxic. Genuine facepalm.

OcUK may honour the full 2 years, but with all due respect to OcUK, the RMA service really does need some common sense put into it. It's really frustrating when you guys simply won't send things from stock when you have loads in stock and insist on waiting the 28 working days or until you get it back from the manufacturer. I know you guys are a business and you need to make money and I have no idea how much of what products you sell, but if it's 6 months in to the product's life and you're sitting on plenty of stock, will it really hurt to get rid of a single unit to help an RMA go much faster? I apologise if I've got any of the above wrong, but this is the impression I got the last time I had to RMA something through you guys.
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In your mind the above sounds great, but now try and be in OCUK mind, what if said card was refused at say sapphire as a void warrenty claim.. your idea would meen ocuk looses money where as now they dont because they just say to you... "No RMA soz blud"!
 
Diagro said:
In your mind the above sounds great, but now try and be in OCUK mind, what if said card was refused at say sapphire as a void warrenty claim.. your idea would meen ocuk looses money where as now they dont because they just say to you... "No RMA soz blud"!
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I'll admit, I didn't actually consider that.

However, it's possible for OcUK to check all of Sapphire's terms for warranty acceptance are fulfilled?

I realise it'll be a LOT more effort for OcUK, but they hardly have the cheapest prices all the time, IMO, they need some way to justify the premium.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire_Technology

Only had one Sapphire card, Sapphire Vapor-X 4890 2GB, was a great value card, only 2 year warranty, but I don't think many people keep a card 2 years these days before selling it on.

Graphics cards owned since 1998 = 13 / 1 = Faulty RMA from purchase, 6 year ago.
Motherboards owned since 1998 = 15 / 3 = Faulty RMA from purchase, last RMA 5 year ago.

All replaced within a week by OcUK, quite good really.

I don't think most people worry about RMA, unless it actually happens. The more wealthy customers won't care if something takes 28 days for RMA, I've seen people just buy new hardware and sell on the RMA replacements.

I look at it another way, if a company like KFA2, Gigabyte are willing to put money into providing customer service in the UK, then why can't other companies?

I mainly buy Gigabyte just out of principle, like I used to Abit, because they had a UK customer centre, other companies would soon change their tune if the sales dropped because they don't give a crap about UK customers.

Asus are just greedy (£) 142 million profit upto Quarter 3, 2012, they are massive and they could easily afford to provide a more efficient, quality service, but ASUS just don't care, because people will buy their products regardless.
 
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Nelly said:
I look at it another way, if a company like KFA2, Gigabyte are willing to put money into providing customer service in the UK, then why can't other companies?
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I was talking about this somewhere on the EVGA forums and the main response was that an RMA hub in mainland Europe is simply a lot more cost effective for the vast majority of countries because the UK is a relatively small market in comparison and is quite expensive to set up in.
 
Cleeecooo said:
I was talking about this somewhere on the EVGA forums and the main response was that an RMA hub in mainland Europe is simply a lot more cost effective for the vast majority of countries because the UK is a relatively small market in comparison and is quite expensive to set up in.
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Yeah true, small Island, but overcrowded. :D

Even Intel RMA come from Holland, but at least they are willing to provide a courier to pickup your faulty CPU/SSD, I actually rang them to find out - great service, hope they start making amazing graphics cards soon lol.
 
Had Sapphire 3850 (AGP) - X1900XT - 6870 & my current 7950 Dual X and they have all been faultless. Until i get a dodgy Sapphire card i'll stick with them as in my experience they make quality cards which i can rely on. And usually have the most accessories come in the box. Who else throws in an HDMI Cable with a GPU :)

Probably gone and jinxed myself now :p
 
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