Which brand X1900XT / XTX ???

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SWCheetah

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I'm about to purchase a Radeon 1900 XT (probably not an XTX but I've considered it, 50 AUD probably isn't worth an extra 25MHz clock speed in my opinion...), but I have no clue which brand to get. Asus, gigabyte, HIS, powercolor, sapphire...?

So can anyone please tell me, which is the best brand card (if there is one) ? I have a good budget and I'm after something powerful, I don't mind forking out an extra 100 AUD for a better brand card. I don't actually understand why, if they have the same chipset/GPU/RAM, there are such large price gaps. So what are the differences? Which one is the best to get?

Also, I'll soon have an Asus motherboard so I'm wondering, would there be any advantage to getting an Asus graphics card, too (probably not, but I thought I might as well ask)?

Thanks. :)

Edit: By the way, dual GPUs aren't really an issue for me now but I might consider getting a Crossfire card later on (my motherboard supports it). Is this important (I'm not 100% sure how crossfire actually works in terms of which cards to get :S)?
 
Okay, the Gigabyte one is the most expensive. Does that mean anything? Or is it just bundled software and other minor differences?

Edit:
By the way, can anyone please tell me what these Sapphire Select unlock keys that the Sapphire card comes with are? I don't get it... :S
 
I don't know what unlock keys are. But, I just Installed a Sapphire X1900XTX - OEM I picked up from newegg.com for $469

Just updated Cat drivers all stock speeds.
w/ opty 150 stock speed 2.4Ghz, just pulled 11,020 in 3Dmark05
I'm pretty happy with that right now... I'm going to overclock a bit tomorrow and see what shakes...

Just played F.E.A.R for about 20 minutes, everything on Maximum... 45FPS was the lowest I saw 65FPS even during fairly heavy fight scenes... I'm in the process of reinstalling BF2, SF & Euroforces...
God, I hate reinstalling games... only about 10 more to go....
 
Okay, cool.
I'm mainly going to be playing Oblivion with this baby. :p
I still don't know whether Gigabyte (most expensive), Asus (same brand as MB) or Sapphire is the best card to get. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks again. :)
 
Yea Sapphire is the best and then probably ATI.

Good decision though, you can EASILY OC the last 25/50mhz to reach XTX speeds and beyound while saving yourself $50-100. Owns the 7900GTX price :)
 
Sapphire is the brand you want to go with. Sapphire select is like a trail program, you can play each game for 1 hour before it cuts you off, and the sapphire select keys allow you to completely unlock two full games. But the sapphire keys and the disk only come in the retail packages, OEMs are cheaper but you don't get the extra software. The only brands I would go with for ATI cards are Sapphire and ATI themself, except ATI manufactured cards don't drop in price that much. I would go with the XT, although XTX sounds a lot cooler lol.

I don't know what games are in sapphire select and I've searched for a up to date list of games but all I could find are the ones that launched with sapphire select. I want to know if Swat 4 is still in it like it was before because that game is pretty cool.
 
Okay. Thanks a bunch guys, you were a huge help..! :D

Guess I'll go get me a Sapphire.

By the way, I had NO idea that ATI even manufactured their own cards? And you say that even though they do, Sapphire make better ones?
 
The HIS and the Sapphire ones are top rated. I like HIS because it'll overclock really well and keep the noise level of the fan relatively low. As far as the XT/XTX goes, my feeling is that if you're gonna pay so much you might as well cap it off with the extra $40 or whatever for the XTX. Monarchcomputers has a HIS XTX for $510 and then $30 off with the rebate.

ALSO! Keep in mind that when you pair a Crossfire Edition card to the XTX, the XTX will slow down to meet the speed of that Crossfire Edition card. From what I've read the XTX is for users who don't want to do the Crossfire set-up. you'd be waisting money to get an XTX and then hook it up to a Crossfire card.
 
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