Just to share with you people, you know, I've came across some people who just don't buy a particular brand because of their personal belief about that brand or because of what they heard from other people. I do admit that one time, I was like them but after researching, I began to have a clearer image. Sometimes what others say is right and sometimes they are wrong and sometimes it is not always like what they said. However, I would still understand if somebody does not buy that particular brand because they had bad experience with that brand's customer service or because the quality was bad or their video card did not work properly or that they are not satisfied with the warranty but there are also those who just don't wanted to try the brand and did not do any research.
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Anyway, these are some examples that I heard from some witnesses/customers about these brands:
I heard somebody saying MSI is not a good brand for video card because it is a motherboard-maker so MSI is good in making motherboard more than making a video card. However, there were 2 reviews/comparisons of MSI HD 4850 with Artic Cooler Hybrid Frozr which had changed my mind about MSI. These 2 comparisons are "MSI R4850 VS ASUS EAH4850 Matrix" and "MSI R4850 VS Sapphire HD 4850" which had totally change the way I used to think about MSI because it proved that MSI HD 4850 is better than Sapphire and Asus's matrix, maybe because MSI uses the Artic Cooler Hybrid Frozr. The reviews proved MSI HD 4850 is 20 C cooler than Sapphire HD 4850 and 40 C cooler than ASUS's EAH4850 Matrix and MSI can also overclock more than ASUS while maintaining good price. It shows that sometimes, even brands like MSI can win against more popular brands like Sapphire and ASUS. Anyway, I don't know how legitimate these reviews/comparisons are.
I also heard some people said that Powercolor is a "Brand of Poor Man's Choice" so they are not going to buy this brand because one time, Powercolor tend to cut off some components of HD 3000 series to make it cheaper and using cheaper component like electrolytic capacitors instead of using the Japan-made all solid capacitors. Despite what some people said, today, i've also seen some Powercolor models with good components and sometimes they are not really cheap. It might be true one time that Powercolor tends to be cheaper and its quality was not good and this depends on which model you buy.
Despite Sapphire being one of the top brand of ATI, some people said that its customer service was bad and they are not going back to buy any Sapphire's video card. Kinda strange, because despite that, many people are still buying Sapphire than many other brands.
I also heard that many said that Gecube as being the lowest brand/rank of ATI and having a bad reputation of lousy customer service but I also saw many people who bought Gecube and did not have any issue. One time, I was interested with Gecube HD 3870 X2 with Twin X-Turbo Fans and I like it because it is quite a good idea to use twin fans than only 1 fan but some of its bad reviews of Gecube X1600 Pro about its customer service had scared me a bit.
And, I also heard about Diamond multimedia brand as being one of the cheapest and worse brand of ATI because some people cannot even install the video card and they have constant crashings so they put Diamond on their "Do not buy" or "Avoid" List. Of course, there are also many people out there with Diamond video cards and they have no problem.
And Palit as being also one of the brand that sells cheapest video card but its bundle sucks. However, the bundles might not be very important when it comes to like free softwares with useless things like 3dmark ratings. So far as I know, Palit is very popular in Asia but not in North American continent.
Some people also avoid a brand with quite good reputation like HIS with its famous cooler like IceQ 4+ simply because HIS offers only 1 year warranty. However, I hope that it would not always be like that and maybe it depends on which model we buy since not all models have the same warranty, if I'm correct.
Interestingly, one time I also heard somebody said that Gigabyte used to make good video cards but now Gigabyte is not as popular as ASUS when it comes to video card and that Gigabyte no longer makes good video card but after researching for a while, I came across a review/comparison between ASUS EAH4870 and Gigabyte HD 4870 and I found out that Gigabyte is a better buy because its fan is much more silent than Asus's so Gigabyte had won only 1 point over ASUS. However, they both are good except this time Gigabyte had won.
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Anyway, I don't know much about these brands, despite what I heard from these people/customers, so that is why I made up this thread and asked. Of course I did not say that these brands are bad because I don't know much about them and I don't have most of these brands too. Sometimes, I don't also want to totally reject what these people said about these brands or about what they had gone through because I don't want to think that they just lie but I also knew that sometimes, totally rejecting a particular brand could also be a wrong thing to do. Maybe it all comes to personal taste/preference or one's experience or one's luck. So far, I only had the old Sapphire Radeon 9600SE and NVIDIA Geforce FX 5200 on 2 pre-built PCs and they were great during their time but sometimes, I do experience Blue Screen of Death or crash.
At the end, one of the most important thing regardless to brand or warranty is the reference design of PCB which would make it safe as well as having non-reference cooler (which is normally better than reference cooler) and its price...
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