Asus vs Sapphire

kylothian

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Aug 12, 2010
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For my new pc im getting an Asus mobo and going AMD all the way
I know this might be a stupid question but im very picky about my parts

I have the options between the Sapphire HD 5850 Toxic edition and the ASUS EAH5850 DirectCU TOP/2DIS/1GD5
The Sapphire one looks cooler but im going for performance wise. Will there be a performance difference if i use the Sapphire Card on a Asus board instead of using the Asus Card on a Asus board

Thanx
Once again sorry if this is a crappy question, but it just bugged me.
 
Sapphire toxic cards are always way overpriced. They Asus Top card and Sapphire Toxic have the same clocks and upgraded coolers. I'm a fan of ASUS and would suggest them, which will also save you a few buck. (At least from the Newegg prices).
 

axinian

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Jul 24, 2010
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It's not a crappy question at all. I have also gone through the painstaking decision of purchasing one of these two cards. I ended up going with the Sapphire Toxic version simply because it was $315 on amazon for a day or so. I jumped on it as it was $25 cheaper than the asus version. The Toxic version also has very good reviews from anyone who has reviewed it, including Hardware Canucks which is very nvidia biased (the card won a clean sweep of all review awards!). The main benefit the Asus DirectCU version has is the overvolting. Overvolting wasn't very attractive to me because I have a pretty high overclock on my old Q6600 that runs stable, but any increase in case temperature I feel would be unsafe for my CPU to run resulting in lowering my CPU clock. This made the Toxic that much sexier. My Toxic is 100% stable clocked at 900/1200 with temps never going over 60C. If heat isn't a problem for you and you want the highest OC you can get from the card, the ASUS DirectCU is probably the better choice. If you aren't interested in overvolting and want a very solid stable overclocking card, get the Toxic (plus the Toxic looks so hot it's hard to pass up lol!).

Personally though, if I were to have waited one month on my purchase, I probably would have gone with the ASUS DirectCU GTX 460 1GB! It is definitely the best bang for the $! ATI vs nvidia is meaningless to me, I just wanted the best card. Hope this helps!
 

kylothian

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Thanks alot im going with the Asus card. Although the toxic looks cooler hahaha i have about 4 240mm fans in my case so hopefully it will be enough to keep me cool :p
This really bugged me for a while but once again thanx alot.

I actually considered the GTX460 but its alot more expensive than the HD5850 (in South Africa anyway) im the same dont care bout ATI and nVidia just want the best performance overall for my PC

Once again thanx loads
 

kylothian

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Aug 12, 2010
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Hahaha nah its fine im still going with Asus all in all.
My final Build for my pc:
Motherboard: ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3
CPU: AMD X4 965 3.2GHZ
Memory: ME-C2G3D16D9x2 – Corsair Dominator DDR3- 1600Mhz
Graphics Card: ASUS EAH5850 DirectCU TOP/2DIS/1GD5

you guys really helped me alot with picking the right parts for my new pc
 

Timop

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Looks great, except you either have a typo, or someones trying to sell you a 955 as an 965 XD.
 
I would just get the 955 if you are going to overclock anyway. The difference is meaningless and you will save some money. Along the same lines there is a version of the DirectCU which doesn't have the factory overclock which, again, is meaningless if you are going to overclock. Going for that one could save you some money as well.
 

kylothian

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I did check it out, but nah im happy with my decision, reason why i never push my pc to the max so i wont need it really, i just need a pc if i can install a game or software it will run with no problems. besides the only one we have avalible is the 2.8ghz but the price difference is to much