What is the Best Brand and Manufacturer for Graphics Cards?

[sirrell]

Just want some other ppls opinions, my favourite is ASUS & Gigabyte, cause they also make good motherboards and their support and drivers is kept uptodate. And Nvidia As Manufacturer, just seen more buggy ATI cards out there than Nvidia maybe i'm just unlucky.

 

[rolli59]

Pretty much every thing is made in China or Taiwan these days and build qualities are about the same. Warranties and customer service is in all reality what separates one manufacturer from the other. I have had GPU's from these companies; Pallit 2, Albatron 1, MSI 4, EVGA 2, Sapphire 3 and ATI 1. I only have one RMA with a 18 month old Sapphire X1900GT which was an example of good warranty and service, but all the other ones have run trouble free for years so how to vote?
I always look at price/performance ratio before I buy so when I bought my current 8800GT I picked up the cheapest one at the time.

 

[conquerz]

"Warning, if you click on "see results", you won't be able to vote"

I wanted to view only the results without voting. But it says "sorry you can't vote" everytime I click "view results".

 

[rolli59]

Anybody looked at the end date for this poll. The OP could buy a card from each manufacturer and try if they will last instead of asking the forum.

 

[L1qu1d]

How could u not have BFG?? They are practically a better EVGA at this point, offering 10 days extra step up Plus they don't really look at the card

I put a vote for bfg

 

[dagger]

Hardware wise, they're the same. They all buy chips from ATI/Nvidia respectively, and use the reference board required by them. The only difference is costumer support/warranty.

 

[L1qu1d]

not always the GPu might be the same, but chips and thermal paste Stuff like that

 

[jeffredo]

As far as the actual "manufacturing" for the most part its a draw between all brands. Occasionally you might have a bad batch from one brand, but the support and warranty is what sets them appart.

EVGA for Nvidia
Visiontek for ATI

 

[kingtz]

When I had Nvidia cards, I had always stuck with BFG. A little expensive, but the customer support was excellent. My 6800GT OC burnt out on me 3 times, and I got 3 replacements without any hassle.

But when I jumped ship to ATI, I got myself an Asus card and was extremely impressed with the quality of the box/packaging and the card. Very solid card that looks well made. I've had it for about 2 months now and no issues, so fortunately, no dealings with customer service yet. *knocks wood*

 

[frozenlead]

Results will vary.

Prediction of the next few posts:

A: Buy EVGA they're l33t and my card is aweshome.
B: I hate EVGA mine blew up!!!!! OMGZ buy Sapphire!!
C:My Sapphire died on me Buy BFG, my BFG never ever fails, gets 60fps in every game
D: MY BFG IS A L0S3R and EXPLODED!!! Yeah, so instead I got an MSI and now I'm happy.

etc, etc.

All a matter of experiences.

 

[L1qu1d]

You just follow the warranty, offers and technical support history lol Not because a card blew up...

Card dieing or "exploding" can happen anytime, with any card, its not a perfect world. Some companies try to offer more, and gaurantee the item more because they have higher confidence in their product. I would trust a company that offers lifetime warranty over 1 that offers a year.

Thats because if they are offering lifetime they prob aren't worried about their card breaking because they kno they did a good job with it, while the non lifetime warranty companies are like, well our card has a high chance of dieing so lets just give them a year, charge less and call it a day.

That can be 1 outtake of this situation as well

 

[FrozenGpu]

Results will vary.

Prediction of the next few posts:

A: Buy EVGA they're l33t and my card is aweshome.
B: I hate EVGA mine blew up!!!!! OMGZ buy Sapphire!!
C:My Sapphire died on me Buy BFG, my BFG never ever fails, gets 60fps in every game
D: MY BFG IS A L0S3R and EXPLODED!!! Yeah, so instead I got an MSI and now I'm happy.

etc, etc.

All a matter of experiences.

Well you are right about that. Most people take their single, couple, few at the very most times they have ever used a certain brand and then say OMG WTFBBQ that company is the rockzors, or OMFG it blew up so now they all suck...Consumers, really need to educate themselves before they even open their mouths/ type in a public space.

But if you had to look at the bigger picture for Nvidia the top 3 in terms of customer service/sales/ and overall reputation of their build quality/ honoring warranties top three would be:

BFG Tech [overtook evga not too long ago, but don't quote me on this]
EVGA
XFX

But those are all great companies and as TH has said, most companies pretty much stick to the reference design [this goes for Nvidia as well as Ati AIB], so it doesn't really matter, as long as the card works and for most ppl it usually works out of the box, some ppl have bad luck more often than it is actually the companies fault for a "bad" card, i say that loosely b/c I have seen soooo many ppl mess up their cards b/c they didn't ground themselves first and could not refrain from touching the actual components that were not covered by shroud/shielding...

For Ati, I'm honestly not too sure, I've used Sapphire so much of the time, but it was really b/c the price/performance was the best at the time.
HIS, visiontek, power color, all seem to work fine.

But if you do have a problem for w/e reason and the merchant you purchased it from won't replace it, keep in mind which companies customer support is easy to understand [not some guy form india, don't get me wrong they work hard, but if you cannot understand them it really doesn't help you now does it?] (I can say I understand the majority of them though) and how willing they are to help you out w/ a RMA/replacement/whatever questions you may have.

So you're an Allstar, get your game on, go play!

Edit: ,

 

[FrozenGpu]

You just follow the warranty, offers and technical support history lol Not because a card blew up...

Card dieing or "exploding" can happen anytime, with any card, its not a perfect world. Some companies try to offer more, and gaurantee the item more because they have higher confidence in their product. I would trust a company that offers lifetime warranty over 1 that offers a year.

Thats because if they are offering lifetime they prob aren't worried about their card breaking because they kno they did a good job with it, while the non lifetime warranty companies are like, well our card has a high chance of dieing so lets just give them a year, charge less and call it a day.

That can be 1 outtake of this situation as well

I just caught what you said liquid, frozenlead was merely predicting what the more ignorant ppl would say when they were relating their experiences, it was not his experiences merely poking some fun at ignorance is all.

 

[L1qu1d]

I was adding to it not really criticizing wat he was saying