Newbie question - 5770

[toontastic]

Following a suggestion on these forums I'm looking at getting the ASUS ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024mb GDDR5 PCI Express card. After looking round I've discovered all sorts of cards like this but not exactly the same for example the Sapphire HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card or the HIS Radeon HD 5770 1GB and the XFX Radeon HD 5770 1024MB. Are these the same card ? Should I choose one over another ?

I've not got loads of games, mainly the likes of Half Life 2 / CS stuff like that the machine will be a mix of media PC and gaming rig.

Thanks

 

[ReeVo.uK]

The majority of them are the same card, simply sold by different manufacturers who plob their name on them. However, there are some manufacturers that plonk their name on and also overclock or modify the cards in order to sell faster versions. However, XFX, Innov8 and such companies are the same cards, just different looks and branding.

 

[toontastic]

And price believe me lol

 

[R34pz]

The only card that's significantly different from the rest is the Sapphire Vapor-X. It has better cooling (although tbh it's only a couple of degrees cooler than the Asus in our other machine), and is capable of overclocking further than the standard cards, especially the ram which reaches 1400 easily. Apparently the black diamond chokes make them around 11 watts lower under load and 6 watts lower idle too. Otherwise they're pretty much all identical, other than price, and the Asus has the voltage tweak enabled in the bios.