Shneiky :
I agree that my Tier 1 and Tier 2 are quite similar in quality, but my personal preference to Asus comes from equal quality across the board of all Asus made boards and their amazing long life which only Sapphire matches. I pass my hardware down to family, so long life that over expands the warranty is something important to me.
EVGA runs hotter and noisier than Gigabyte/Sapphire/Asus. The software has nothing to do with the question, which is purely hardware. EVGA and XFX both have sometimes power design issues, they are less than MSI, but are still there. On a lot of occasions, I have witnessed a coil whine, or a capacitor whining mainly on XFX, but also on EVGA cards, after 1-2 years of use, the percentage is small, but not to be discounted. XFX have generally more noisy coolers.
And no, Gigabyte is not the coolest and quietest. They have an astounding quality though. I personal don't like their slightly thinner PCBs but that's more of a my thing.
I am a person who works 10-12 hours daily in front of a computer. Not gaming - working. When you spend that much time, you start to appreciate every few Db less of noise, and Asus is the leader there (except their edition of 290X which did not work out). I prefer to run stock Mhz and stay at under 30 Db at full load, than to superclock and hear a tiny helicopter in the case. It is a matter of priorities.
Its funny you keep posting generalizations like this. The Gigabyte actually runs considerably cooler than the ASUS (and EVGA).
I understand you like ASUS, but what you are saying simply isn't factual. Read some articles. Please prove me wrong if you can.
I have read a TON about these cards. The gigabyte runs cooler than the ASUS, EVGA, or MSI.
Coil whine can happen in any manufacturer's card. The good companies cover this under warranty, and will replace the card if you have excessive coil whine. Just because you got a card of company "X" 5 years ago that made coil whine doesn't mean that every card they produce does the same thing. You make it sound like you had coil whine from multiple cards which I find hard to swallow. Did you try to get them replaced under warranty?
I am going to stop following this thread because its frustrating when people join forums and think they are experts, while meanwhile sites like Toms and Anandtech etc are posting very precise information that proves otherwise.
I sit in front of the computer at work for 10+ hours a day regularly also. I'm not a big fan of coil whine myself. I'm also not sold on Asus either because 1) they posted a really crappy video trying to show how good AIDA 64 is for Ivy Bridge stress testing (which is a joke), and 2) I bought one of their monitors and it was the worst picture I have ever seen. Maybe it was a lemon.
I know alot of people have really good experiences with Asus, and I will try Asus again for a graphics card, but I am not going to pay a premium over EVGA or gigabyte in order to do so.
All of the Gigabyte and EVGA products I bought lasted much longer than their warranties. Less than 6 months ago I gave a Q6600 and Gigabyte mobo to a friend that had been running overclocked for about 5-6 years, and it still ran excellent. I just retired a EVGA GTX 260 as well, still runs like a champ with no coil whine.
Anyway, you are entitled to your opinion, I just wish you would site some facts rather than make a handful of claims that don't line up with the reviews from experts (people who actually review components and write reviews for a living).
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