Please, do not post while you are on crack. If not, seek medical attention.
-
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.
Which Graphics Manufacturer DON'T you want
- Thread starter smogsy
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Dec 2015
- Posts
- 18,512
Anywhere that doesn't have UK RMA , i like the fact OCUK handles some RMA issues but forces your hand in one shopping basket for price . I can Zotac at trade price but wouldn't touch it as it has to go off to Hong Kong so left with OCUK only .
Also any that doesn't have an EU rep in a major forum that isn't their own like Asus .
Seen Gigabyte , EKWB , ASRock active on here but would expect more to be floating around, i know MSI are on a different site but with the deals they do at OCUK, and seems it's quite often, why isn't there a rep...
Also any that doesn't have an EU rep in a major forum that isn't their own like Asus .
Seen Gigabyte , EKWB , ASRock active on here but would expect more to be floating around, i know MSI are on a different site but with the deals they do at OCUK, and seems it's quite often, why isn't there a rep...
Soldato
Asus on gpus, because of the many horror stories I hear around here. However I do have Asus CH6 Hero because mobos support is covered by OCUK.
Otherwise I have no issues with the other brands. But I will prefer Sapphire/Powercolor on AMD cards and MSI/EVGA/Gigabyte on Nvidia.
Otherwise I have no issues with the other brands. But I will prefer Sapphire/Powercolor on AMD cards and MSI/EVGA/Gigabyte on Nvidia.
Associate
I don't want any manufacturer with a short warranty so anything 2 years and under is a no go for me. My preferred manufacturers are Asus ( for motherboard and monitor, the sabertooth line is really amazing and has 5 years warranty ) and Zotac for GPUs and 5 years warranty.
Man of Honour
KFA is an interesting one. They put all their worst parts in the clown card so in theory their top end is spectacular, which is somewhat proven by the HOF versions.
Personally though, I echo the guy above. As long as it's at least a 3 year warranty, I'm generally neutral. A fondness for ASUS however because I've never had anything ASUS fail on me, in over 10 years.
Personally though, I echo the guy above. As long as it's at least a 3 year warranty, I'm generally neutral. A fondness for ASUS however because I've never had anything ASUS fail on me, in over 10 years.
Gigabyte i avoid if possible, i've had a r9 290 i bought in '14 which was RMAd in '15 and recived a windforce which was RMA'd because it couldnt run at base clocks due to thermals and bios oddities (max temp of 85 not 95) which i now have a r9 390 which is ok but no overclock room.
Soldato
- Joined
- 11 Mar 2013
- Posts
- 5,502
Asus RMA has been shocking over the years.
Associate
I've used them once for my monitor and they were spot on, took less than a week to get it sorted and had a new monitor delivered. I've never had any other issues with them so can't comment on anything else.
Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Apr 2010
- Posts
- 3,034
MSI - three days and counting and no reply to a support ticket. Tried their help line and it just tells you to raise a support ticket if you want to make contact. Useless.
Permabanned
I intend to avoid MSI and Asus when buying AMD cards from them,
The reason being that with the release of Hawaii which was AMD's premium high end 200 series product they did next to know development and simply bolted on the coolers made for Nvidia chips which resulted in poor performance.
I had a 4gb MSI Twin Frozr IV 770 which was a great card, Because of that I then bought a 4gb Twin Frozr 4 290x just to find a card that did not seem to even have a different heatsink, The result of which was a card that sat in the low 90's under load regardless of fan speeds.
Asus where no better as we saw from how the half the heatsinks pipes did not even touch the chip due to it being originally designed for the larger Nvidia chip, end result was roughly the same as the MSI card.
When a company treats one of two brands as the lesser cousin they don't deserve our money.
It seems MSI did better with the Grenada variant but for me the most amazing thing to see was how the very first aftermarket Grenada cards from Asus used the same DCUII cooler as the Hawaii had, Strix and the 3 fan model soon appeared but I could not believe they stuck those same cruddy coolers on the first batch of 390's and 390x's.
It's possible the actual heatsink was different but I can't imagine they'd of developed one just to move over to the newer designs a few weeks later.
So there are the two brands I actively avoid. It's a shame too because at the time I had the matching MSI motherboard and now I have a ROG board but I'm not interested in matching it up unless the Vega models Asus build prove to be exceptional cards.
The reason being that with the release of Hawaii which was AMD's premium high end 200 series product they did next to know development and simply bolted on the coolers made for Nvidia chips which resulted in poor performance.
I had a 4gb MSI Twin Frozr IV 770 which was a great card, Because of that I then bought a 4gb Twin Frozr 4 290x just to find a card that did not seem to even have a different heatsink, The result of which was a card that sat in the low 90's under load regardless of fan speeds.
Asus where no better as we saw from how the half the heatsinks pipes did not even touch the chip due to it being originally designed for the larger Nvidia chip, end result was roughly the same as the MSI card.
When a company treats one of two brands as the lesser cousin they don't deserve our money.
It seems MSI did better with the Grenada variant but for me the most amazing thing to see was how the very first aftermarket Grenada cards from Asus used the same DCUII cooler as the Hawaii had, Strix and the 3 fan model soon appeared but I could not believe they stuck those same cruddy coolers on the first batch of 390's and 390x's.
It's possible the actual heatsink was different but I can't imagine they'd of developed one just to move over to the newer designs a few weeks later.
So there are the two brands I actively avoid. It's a shame too because at the time I had the matching MSI motherboard and now I have a ROG board but I'm not interested in matching it up unless the Vega models Asus build prove to be exceptional cards.
Associate
GPU wise I've ended up with Gigabyte cards for the last 4 purchases, although I've zero experience with their actual RMA and customer support as I've never had a failure.
While I would not discount them totally I do tend to avoid full price ASUS cards when I'm building or recommending a system/component for someone due to the high premium you pay.
If I ever buy an AMD card again (which I probably wont) I'd stay clear of XFX.
While I would not discount them totally I do tend to avoid full price ASUS cards when I'm building or recommending a system/component for someone due to the high premium you pay.
If I ever buy an AMD card again (which I probably wont) I'd stay clear of XFX.
Permabanned
- Joined
- 9 Dec 2010
- Posts
- 7,438
Any Chinese/Taiwanese vendor cards.
Some of my experiences with Asus:
Bought one of their "premium" motherboards back in the LGA775 days - failed after a few days - 3 times (all of which took about 2 weeks turn around) they sent out what were obviously other customer's returns that appeared to be in the state they were in as returned from the customer and also either dead or failing - the last one I took a hammer to just to end the whole sorry story. http://imgur.com/SFP5h9g
Around the same time I bought a graphics card from them - it had the wrong core soldered onto the board! fortunately Overclockers (after a few delays which I was compensated for) got on top of that and sorted it. http://imgur.com/wkgw7O6
Stupidly I returned to Asus for the pg278q (didn't really have any other choices though at the time for 1440p@144Hz G-Sync) - after a few months it was dying with the common issue of fuzzy text - took them 3 weeks to sort it out but I did atleast get a new replacement - judging from what other people were saying I'm guessing they ran out of refurbs and were eventually forced to send out a new panel. Unfortunately a few months later that replacement started dying as well. So I ended up just buying the then available Dell equivalent to be shot of the story.
EDIT: Those aren't even all my stories :s - got a few more including someone I know IRL who has been through more than 5 of the pg278q.
Soldato
I just want the cheapest non factory overclocked card with a decent cooler and 2-3 year European based rma.
As basically they are pretty much all the same when it comes to heat and overclocking, so avoid over priced Asus cards and many other of the expensive models especially when looking at cards one lower from the top.
As basically they are pretty much all the same when it comes to heat and overclocking, so avoid over priced Asus cards and many other of the expensive models especially when looking at cards one lower from the top.