• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Does the brand really matter?

lemming3k

lemming3k

lemming3k

Associate
Joined
5 Sep 2020
Posts
87
Does anyone think the brand of their GPU really matters? The specs always seem to be pretty much identical so other than "I've had a bad experience with X" is there any real advantages to one over the other?

I'm looking at 7900XTs and I've always gone Sapphire in the past (one was £700 at the weekend but I missed out), but there seem to be more brands than ever before. Is anything in particular a dud? Hard to see the justification in the price differences.
 
Another thread asking the same for AMD specifically earlier this week:

Best Radeon brand

Hi which Radeon GPU brand is the best for after sell care.
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk

Consensus is that Sapphire are the go-to for AMD cards :)

The main differentiating factor (apart from cooler performance/aesthetics) is always going to be how much hassle they are in the event of a warranty claim - If buying a Sapphire card form OCUK they will support directly for the duration of the warranty apparently so probably about as good as you will find
 
Powercolor and Sapphire are apparently Tier 1 AMD partners,and they only make AMD cards. Other companies who make dGPUs for both AMD and Nvidia,can sometimes try to shoehorn coolers onto AMD cards.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Powercolor and Sapphire are apparently Tier 1 AMD partners,and they only make AMD cards. Other companies who make dGPUs for both AMD and Nvidia,can sometimes try to shoehorn coolers onto AMD cards.
Click to expand...
Sapphire all the way for amd bar the 2 year warranty is pretty stingy for very expensive tier cards (in general) so I'd probably pay the extra for asus/msi etc to get the 3 year but that's personal preference.

Powercolor are awful! I don't know anyone including myself that hasn't had 1 fail, they are fun fact THE most rma'ed brand for gpu's I was told by 2 different suppliers... For the price you can buy better brands or if not at that point you're not far off the extra required for piece of mind/better warranty/reliability...
 
Last edited:
keef247 said:
Sapphire all the way for amd bar the 2 year warranty is pretty stingy for very expensive tier cards (in general) so I'd probably pay the extra for asus/msi etc to get the 3 year but that's personal preference.

Powercolor are awful! I don't know anyone including myself that hasn't had 1 fail, they are fun fact THE most rma'ed brand for gpu's I was told by 2 different suppliers... For the price you can buy better brands or if not at that point you're not far off the extra required for piece of mind/better warranty/reliability...
Click to expand...

MSI and Asus tend to re-use coolers,so had various issues with models having problems. Sapphire and Powercolor only make AMD specific coolers hence the Tiers,so some of the best cooled cards come from them. Sapphire are more consistent than Powercolor I agree,but then you have cards such as the Powercolor R9 390 PCS which were great.
 
sx_turbo said:
No problems with power colour here, though only been running for 6 months and not had a particularly hard life either and I got budget power colour (red dragon)
Click to expand...
I noticed when a lot of new cards came out iirc 6900xt and 7900xt/x they were being sent back within 1-3 months? I know a lot of people on here had nabbed them at the time and some had experienced this definitely with the 6900xt around christmas iirc.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Might be something more recent then. Good to know.
Click to expand...
From my personal experience, my rx580 8gb will not stay stable without a -200 memory underclock/knocking the voltage down and a -powerlimit. I wasted a whole day faffing about with it, and anyone else I know who's own 1 or more tends to have had atleast 1 give them trouble brand wise (not rx580 wise haha) and it would seem this is divided into a 50/50 base of opinions of ownership online...

As I say when enquiring about my new gpu I asked 2 well known suppliers and they without prompting both said Powercolor have the most rma's of any gpu, like ever.

I personally think they look pretty cheaply made too compared to simiarly priced stuff and their coolers often aren't as beefy either. I'd go sapphire everytime over them, but then i'd go asus for the warranty as although I like msi I think they're always around the same price but the build quality/proven cooling/performance isn't as good and they have a habbit of not including basic things like a metal backplate on some models which just seems very cheeky considering the price bracket vs other brands?
 
keef247 said:
From my personal experience, my rx580 8gb will not stay stable without a -200 memory underclock/knocking the voltage down and a -powerlimit. I wasted a whole day faffing about with it, and anyone else I know who's own 1 or more tends to have had atleast 1 give them trouble brand wise (not rx580 wise haha) and it would seem this is divided into a 50/50 base of opinions of ownership online...

As I say when enquiring about my new gpu I asked 2 well known suppliers and they without prompting both said Powercolor have the most rma's of any gpu, like ever.

I personally think they look pretty cheaply made too compared to simiarly priced stuff and their coolers often aren't as beefy either. I'd go sapphire everytime over them, but then i'd go asus for the warranty as although I like msi I think they're always around the same price but the build quality/proven cooling/performance isn't as good and they have a habbit of not including basic things like a metal backplate on some models which just seems very cheeky considering the price bracket vs other brands?
Click to expand...

Cards like the Powercolor PCS R9 390 was probably the best R9 390 card made. Had the Powercolor RX470 Red Devil which was pretty solid. Recently owned the Sapphire RX5600XT Pulse and RX5700 Nitro+ which had decent coolers and the later had so much RGB it was like a Disco when lit up!
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Cards like the Powercolor PCS R9 390 was probably the best R9 390 card made. Had the Powercolor RX470 Red Devil which was pretty solid. Recently owned the Sapphire RX5600XT Pulse and RX5700 Nitro+ which had decent coolers and the later had so much RGB it was like a Disco when lit up!
Click to expand...
Nice!
Haha! Down with the disco! My current main is murdered out stealth black on black with brushed steel/ally where required :D Tbf as is the SFF. Stealth over cringe anyday!
 
TrojanWhore said:
Another thread asking the same for AMD specifically earlier this week:

Best Radeon brand

Hi which Radeon GPU brand is the best for after sell care.
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk

Consensus is that Sapphire are the go-to for AMD cards :)

The main differentiating factor (apart from cooler performance/aesthetics) is always going to be how much hassle they are in the event of a warranty claim - If buying a Sapphire card form OCUK they will support directly for the duration of the warranty apparently so probably about as good as you will find
Click to expand...
Oops. Sorry I should have searched.
That's good to know, Sapphires have always served me well. Not sure anyone does great with warranties anymore and most are only 2 years it seems?
 
Oh damn, now reading the other comments I'm less sure on the Powercolor deal. Fingers crossed I guess.
I'm surprised at the warranty on £800+ items really. UK law talks of things being 'fit for purpose', and unless you're mining 24/7 surely a card at that price should last many years? White goods generally have to last much longer so would seem odd this can't be challenged.
 
The very budget versions of both AMD and Nvidia card's are 2 years warranty.

An AMD example is the RX 6650 XT Powercolour Fighter
Or on the Nvidia side the Palit GeForce RTX 4060 StormX

No one should be buying these cards really, they are not bad cards but spend the extra 5% to get something with a better cooler and 3 year warranty.

The vast majority of AMD and Nvidia cards are 3 years and you can still get them at a low cost compared with some of the more premium versions, like everything else there is a middle ground.
 
Last edited:
lemming3k said:
Oh damn, now reading the other comments I'm less sure on the Powercolor deal. Fingers crossed I guess.
I'm surprised at the warranty on £800+ items really. UK law talks of things being 'fit for purpose', and unless you're mining 24/7 surely a card at that price should last many years? White goods generally have to last much longer so would seem odd this can't be challenged.
Click to expand...

Are you looking at this one?

www.overclockers.co.uk

Powercolor Radeon RX 7900 XT MBA 20GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Order Powercolor Radeon RX 7900 XT MBA 20GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card now online and benefit from fast delivery.
www.overclockers.co.uk www.overclockers.co.uk

Don't, just no..... what is that even doing there with a 1 year warranty?

This one....

www.overclockers.co.uk

Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT Pulse 20GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Order Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT Pulse 20GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card now online and benefit from fast delivery.
www.overclockers.co.uk www.overclockers.co.uk

Much better cooler, 3 year warranty and cheaper, that is a good card by any measure.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom