I'm buying a Radeon HD 6970. Should I choose Sapphire or Power Color?

Toomuchprotein

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I'm building my first budget gaming PC, and I've decided on the Radeon HD 6970, but I don't know which brand is better, the Sapphire or the Power Color:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131578&cm_re=radeon_hd_6970-_-14-131-578-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202113&cm_re=radeon_hd_6970-_-14-202-113-_-Product

I've already asked around a little bit and people tend to tell me to go with the Sapphire, but when asked why, their reasoning is usually something like, "Oh, well everyone knows it's better" or "My friend has one and he says it's great."

Can someone please help me figure out which of these to choose with reasoning that isn't purely anecdotal? If there would be even the slightest difference in performance, I want to make sure I pick the best one.

Also, another thing that confuses me about these two choices is that their effective memory clocks are listed at different rates. The Sapphire's is listed at 5500Mhz and the Power Color's is listed as 1250Mhz. I understand that Power Color may have forgotten to account for quad pumping, but 1250Mhz x 4 still only equals 5000Mhz, not 5500Mhz. Do different companies sometimes make their cards with different memory clocks, or did one of these companies just mess up and list the incorrect effective memory clock? Thanks for any answers ahead of time.
 
Solution
Ok I misread your post.
The original AMD card has a clock of 1375 MHz according to TechPowerUp.
Anything below that is underclocked.
So the 1250MHz of the Powercolor is underclocked; and the 1375 MHz of the Sapphire is same as the factory card.
You can tweak memory clocks yourself using a software known as MSI Afterburner. However, the value you specified has to be reapplied when you restart the PC; it is not saved in the card.

PCBuilderMonster

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The answer in vague response is Both. What seperates the build quality is the material of the shroud (ex msi is plastic and gigabyte is metal) but what really matters is the PCB, PowerColor lacks. Different lower end caps is a diffrerence. I could really get into confusing detail but lets just keep it at Sapphire has a little better quality components.
 
Nobody has messed up.
The clock for memory is generally listed as base, and effective.
If the card is DDR3, it's multiplied by 2, if DDR5, then it's multiplied by 4.
For a 1250MHz base memory frequency, the DDR3 card would be 2500MHz and GDDR5 card would be 5000MHz.
The powercolor one must have overclocked their memory clock for a base clock of 1375 MHz, instead of the standard 1350 MHz. Overclocking means increasing clocks beyond what the manufacturer has specified. Note that if done too much, it may lead to a crash when playing games or such and in case of a GPU overclock(instead of memory), may also lead to a burned-out GPU.

UPDATE: Looks from TechPowerUp that 1375 is the standard frequency for the 6970, and the Sapphire one has UNDERclocked the memory of the card.
 

Toomuchprotein

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I don't understand. The effective memory clock of the Sapphire card appears to be higher than that of the Power Color. How is it underclocked? Also, can this base clock be easily adjusted ie Is it something I should be concerned about when choosing between these cards?
 
Ok I misread your post.
The original AMD card has a clock of 1375 MHz according to TechPowerUp.
Anything below that is underclocked.
So the 1250MHz of the Powercolor is underclocked; and the 1375 MHz of the Sapphire is same as the factory card.
You can tweak memory clocks yourself using a software known as MSI Afterburner. However, the value you specified has to be reapplied when you restart the PC; it is not saved in the card.
 
Solution

Toomuchprotein

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Sorry, I'm new here and I thought maybe no one could see this post since there were no replies in about 3 hours. No more double-posting =)