This is why I buy Sapphire.

[Yin]

I had a 9600XT, Never clocked it or anything. Work fine for about 2 3 years then it just died I went to the support forums to seek help and I tried to get it rma but they didn't even let me send it in so makes you wonder =/. I ended up replacing my whole computer needed an upgrade anyway because pci-e was out

 

[Huxley2k7]

What the hell? There's nothing wrong with Sapphire at all, they are like the BFG/XFX of Nvidia. Sapphire is the top-dog ATi manufacturer in my opinion, they make the best cards.

 

[newtekie1]

There is nothing wrong with Sapphire, but there are plenty of other great companies out there also. Sticking to one manufacture is just plain stupid.

 

[t_ski]

Sapphire is one of the top ATI card manufacturers. In fact, it has been long rumored that Sapphire makes the cards that ATI brands as their own.

As for their support, I have never needed it, but the one Sapphire card that I owned that went bad (Radeon 8500) I RMAed to NewEgg like I was supposed to. It's amazing to see how some people don't follow the rules and get all POed when things don't go the way they expect. I have never been treated wrong by any manufacturer, and my only bad RMA experience was with a retailer who refused to RMA something because it was broken (the tabs broke off a CPU socket, which was why I was trying to RMA it). I went to the manufacturer and they hooked me up immediately.

 

[Yin]

speaking about support issues, does anyone know how evga is with their support?

 

[MadCow]

I wish they had a better RMA procedure, I had to send around 3 emails before they responded, and then they had the most confusing instructions, and I needed a receipt, so I couldn't RMA my ebay-bought card.

And I know for sure that sapphire used to make "built by ATI" cards, because when I RMA'ed my "built by ATI" 9600 pro, I got a sapphire card back.

 

[newtekie1]

EVGA has very good RMA precedures and support. The need a reciept because their warranty, like most others, only cover the original owner. Since you bought it off ebay you are not the original owner, and don't deserve the warranty coverage.

I've RMA'd several things to eVGA and all have gone smoothly. And if you register the product within 30 days of buying it you also get a free upgrade to the Advanced RMA service, which means they will cross-ship(normally they charge $10 extra to do this).

 

[largon]

The factory in the article is owned by PC Partner ltd, not Sapphire...
Sapphire - like most other AIBs - is just a video card reseller. They order (buy) the assembled boards from OEMs like PC Partner, Foxconn or Flextronics which build all video cards be it Geforce or Radeon. Foxconn (one of the board-OEMs) and Zotac (subsidiary of PC Partner) are afaik the only AIBs that actually produce their own cards.

(...)
it says a lot about a company when ati rebrands their(sapphire's) cards as "built by ati."

Where does it say that?

 

[Random Murderer]

Where does it say that?

it doesn't say it in the article, but it's pretty widely known that ati has had sapphire manufacturing their cards for a year or two now.

 

[Steevo]

My X1800XT is a sapphire rebadged ATI, I peeled the Sapphire sticker back a bit and the ATI sticker is underneath. Plus it overclocked well, and I have had 0 issues with it, so I bought a HD3870 from Sapphire.

 

[TUngsten]

I've had 3 sapphire cards. One was DOA and I returned it to Newegg, one was fine and the other was one of the mis-flashed x850pro / xt batch.

I think they are pretty much just like the other brands, but my main beef w/ them is their totally terrible support. Weeks to respond to emails, terrible tech forums, no phone support.

In this day and age, I go with the company that provides me with great support, since essentially, the cards are all the same. Sapphire support is poor enough that I won't ever buy from them again.

 

[VroomBang]

I've got a 5 months old x1950 pro and it's faulty (overheats). Tech support went through some troubleshooting but quickly offered an RMA. So I can't complain really.

 

[largon]

My X1800XT is a sapphire rebadged ATI, I peeled the Sapphire sticker back a bit and the ATI sticker is underneath. Plus it overclocked well, and I have had 0 issues with it, so I bought a HD3870 from Sapphire.

Peel the sticker from any a Radeon and you see that all reference design cards are rebadged ATis. They rarely allow AIBs to design their own boards so hardware-wise it doesn't matter what brand one buy they're all the exact same.

 

[btarunr]

Actually isn't it the same with both NVidia and ATi? I mean, all the "Designed by NVidia" motherboards that EVGA, BFG and XFX sell are all so identical, it's just about peeling the stickers to make them look identical. Same applies to all the 8800 GTX cards. There never was a non-reference PCB ever made for the 8800 GTX, GTS (G80).

 

[Widjaja]

@btarunr
Same apples (applies) heh

I heard Foxconn make the base design for eVGA and XFX motherboards.
I think Foxconn also make the base design for other manufacturers but I can't remember thier names.

But this is a bit off topic.

 

[BumbRush]

ok let me explain their rep to those that dont get it.

they have a bad habbit of using under powerd cooling or poor quillity glue to hold on their passive coolers on older low end chips like the 9600 i had back in the day, may cards failed due to the cooler simply falling off.

also they have at times used lower quility componants on their own branded cards then they used on cards they made for other companys such as the BBA(ati branded cards), again, this lead to some batches of buggy or bad cards.

Now im not badmouthing sapphire all companys have their bad times/batches, its just that sapphire has had more of them in a sagment of the market that has alot of very verbose users.

the other part of that rep is due to their use of underpowered cooling on many coolers, look at that 3870 they sell cheap, the coolers singel slot and way to small.........

thats where the rep comes from, also they had some faulty toxic cards at one point, leeky water cooling OR no liquid in the cooler(or airbubbles that kept it from circulating) pissed a bunch of ppl off who spent way to much for an uber high end card.....