Gigabyte AMD GPUs

[Troezar]

Just thought I'd see what recent experience is like with Gigabyte? I've bought my first Gigabyte product recently, X570 Aorus Master. I'm about to buy a 5700XT, I was looking at Sapphire but they seem very picky on RMA. Powercolor cards seem decent but only 12 months warranty is ridiculous.

Gigabyte seem to have a decent RMA and a rep on here. What is the quality of their AMD GPUs like? I've heard stories about dodgy fans...

There doesn't seem to be an obvious answer on the AMD side.

 

[Davedree]

The problem is people parrot forum talk or from reviews, with no hands on experience of the product. It also depends on how far back in time you go and how fine the detail you look into it. Generally all manufacturers at some time or other have made cockups or poor products, so it' best to do as much research as possible before buying. I'd also wait for the aib rx5700's unless you want a reference card.

If you look to the Tahiti days then Gigabyte locked their voltage control and other manufacturers provided better value.

Recently I owned a gigabyte rx570 gaming and it was a very quiet and well made card, it came with the better samsung memory, and the bios was written to boost higher than my sapphire rx570's, but it did suffer from a dry fan bearing.
So i had to oil it every now and then but eventually I found a new fan on ebay.
Of the 5x sapphire rx570 cards 3 of them suffered with fan bearing failures too.

I had a gigabyte vega56 for about 6 months and I don't understand why people give this such a bad rep, (hot crap cooler/ unreliable crashing). Maybe i was lucky, but my gigabyte v56 was the best Vega out of all my v64's and v56's. If you looked at the rip off asus strix v56,64 they had s serious heatsink defect and I made sure people steered clear of them.

 

[Vince]

My honest opinion is at the low end around rx550/rx560 they are some of the worst cards quality wise but further up the stack they are some of the best. Ive had gigabyte Vega64's and also own a gigabyte Radeon 7 and they have been great cards. As @Davedree says I also have fan failures on the sapphire rx570's and one of them was within 6 months.

 

[Vexr]

Can't complain about my Gigabyte RX 550 back up card. I bought it used 4 months ago and I've no doubt it's had a strenuous life previously (probably cryptomining). It seems very quiet and cool to me at 100% load, though it is of course a potato.

 

[robfosters]

I’m currently running a GB Vega 64 and it s cracking performer. Runs most things excellently at 1440p and is actually pretty quiet.

Does anyone know if GB are releasing an Auros branded 5700XT at all? I’m mulling it over, but I’m unsure whether or not I’ll notice the performance difference much, or whether I’m better off waiting for big navi or 3080Ti.

 

[Poneros]

The Gigabyte Vega cards have been abysmal (the custom cooler ones), that's why you see so many people online trashing them and you can see a ton of negative reviews. It's because people they bought them and they were trash. Gigabyte even for Nvidia has poor QA in my experience but they're more competitive there at least.

In truth, if you go with AMD you need to buy from a good retailer that will deal with the warranty for those 2 years, which is basically the warranty you can expect for AMD cards in general, with some small exceptions of 3 years (eg Asus on OCUK). But Asus has put out nothing but garbage for AMD for 10 years straight, where they've also been plagued by QA issues continuously. Idk where PowerColor says 1 year warranty for you, but it's definitely not the case, it's 2.

My advice is, buy from a reputable retailer that honours warranty (eg OCUK), and avoid the Nvidia brands for AMD, so stick with the pros that actually do QA (Sapphire, PowerColor, XFX).

 

[Arslan Shakeel]

The Gigabyte Vega cards have been abysmal (the custom cooler ones), that's why you see so many people online trashing them and you can see a ton of negative reviews. It's because people they bought them and they were trash. Gigabyte even for Nvidia has poor QA in my experience but they're more competitive there at least.

In truth, if you go with AMD you need to buy from a good retailer that will deal with the warranty for those 2 years, which is basically the warranty you can expect for AMD cards in general, with some small exceptions of 3 years (eg Asus on OCUK). But Asus has put out nothing but garbage for AMD for 10 years straight, where they've also been plagued by QA issues continuously. Idk where PowerColor says 1 year warranty for you, but it's definitely not the case, it's 2.

My advice is, buy from a reputable retailer that honours warranty (eg OCUK), and avoid the Nvidia brands for AMD, so stick with the pros that actually do QA (Sapphire, PowerColor, XFX).

This exactly; many of the gigabyte Vega cards failed fairly fast

 

[Troezar]

Quite a varied set of experiences even in this thread. Seems to mostly be a lottery, do a decent warranty length and helpful retailer appear to be the best answer.

The one year warranty was on the Powercolor Radeon VII but see they usually give two. I'd expect a three year warranty on any product this expensive but looks like that's not common unless you buy Nvidia. I suppose that's what the price premium is partly paying for.

I will say for Gigabyte, they seem to be upping their game recently whilst ASUS are slipping. I've usually bought Sapphire for AMD but have had XFX, current 5830 placeholder card is XFX and had had issues with the 2D clocks for most of the time I've had it. Probably going in the bin once I get a new card!

GPUs seen to be there part that fails more than any other so I'll likely be buying from OCUK for the customer service. Just hoping some official information is forthcoming as I'm getting bored waiting for these 5700 XT cards.

 

[D1craig]

I'm sure gigabyte made one of the worst rx 480s or 580s. The cooler was terrible and couldn't cool at all.

 

[Panos]

Just thought I'd see what recent experience is like with Gigabyte? I've bought my first Gigabyte product recently, X570 Aorus Master. I'm about to buy a 5700XT, I was looking at Sapphire but they seem very picky on RMA. Powercolor cards seem decent but only 12 months warranty is ridiculous.

Gigabyte seem to have a decent RMA and a rep on here. What is the quality of their AMD GPUs like? I've heard stories about dodgy fans...

There doesn't seem to be an obvious answer on the AMD side.

Sapphire is fine if you do not tamper the card, eg watercool it. If you plan to watercool the card, use reference model from AMD directly or Gigabyte. (hence bought the AE this time).
And yes Polaris & Vega cards made by Gigabyte with pretty abysmal coolers, but the same can be said for the Asus V64 Strix who had engineering design flaw crippling the card.

So to sum up. For AIB 5700XT get Sapphire/Powercolor. For watercooling get reference model from Gigabyte or AMD.
Unfortunately there is no EVGA in the AMD GPUs.

 

[Davedree]

I'm sure gigabyte made one of the worst rx 480s or 580s. The cooler was terrible and couldn't cool at all.

The problem of heat and insane current draw affected nearly all aib's of the mk1 polaris and it was due to the failed 14nm process. Asus actually made a beefy cooler for the rx480 though.
Both sapphire and gigabyte heatsink designs were not upto the job, unless you undervolted and tweaked the fan.

On the 2nd stepping of polaris we saw it first with the xfx gtr and then to 5* generation, the current draw and temps were quite an improvement. This time round both sapphire and gigabyte revised their coolers, but unfortunately the mining boom hit.

 

[Troezar]

Sapphire is fine if you do not tamper the card, eg watercool it. If you plan to watercool the card, use reference model from AMD directly or Gigabyte. (hence bought the AE this time).
And yes Polaris & Vega cards made by Gigabyte with pretty abysmal coolers, but the same can be said for the Asus V64 Strix who had engineering design flaw crippling the card.

So to sum up. For AIB 5700XT get Sapphire/Powercolor. For watercooling get reference model from Gigabyte or AMD.
Unfortunately there is no EVGA in the AMD GPUs.

Thanks Panos, some good advice. Think I'll go Sapphire/Powercolor then upgrade to reference big Navi to watercool later