I condemn a brand for delivering bad quality products always after several bad experiences and I also consider how it happens,is it my mistakes or their mistakes.
HIS, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Shappire, XFX, Corsair, Antec, Coolermaster, Tagan, Silverstone, Crucial, Mushkin, and many more on my shopping list are eventually added into the list after about 10 years experience.
I dont want to say that a brand is bad just because of 1 product or 1 failure case.
I dare to say that Powercolor is bad (for example) because I have once bought 3 different GPUs from Powercolor in a same year and three of them got broken in the same year (less than a year life).
I have once condemned OCZ for having bad products, but after quite a while, the quality from OCZ has improved significantly. I knew this because I receive specs from my customers (I built new rigs for extra greens, but this not my main living source) which included OCZ RAMs, and they perform very well and without many problems. I changed my mind because of that.
My old HIS HD3850 is still alive after 3 years, previous HISs were also good... and my current HIS HD5850...the well I can not tell yet... I got it only since a few weeks..but looking from the temperature...I believe it will last long...
HIS delivers always those among the best OC'ed GPU with very reliable and silent cooling system in the market especially the IceQ series.
But well..again personal preference plays also a role..If you are not sure about the brand...it is better for you to stay away from it..this is also my way of buying things.
Shappire and ASUS are also good, just pick the one one you like or the cheapest one.