BF2S Forums Radeon 1900XT question

look at the frequencies they operate at. Most of the difference you will notice is that its an ATI chipset, and ATI runs it as a certain frequency, but other companies will put a little heavier cooling on it and run it higher.

Outside of that, it comes down to brand name...  a lot like sapphire, BFG and ASUS... 

Compare the frequencies for your best comparrison (for x1900xt, they are all the same for the XT model) (assuming all else is equal, 256 meg of ram), then read some reviews on stability of the cards, and go from there.

also, make sure you read if its open box or recertified, and what warranty it still provides.

I would just go with Sapphire.  They've made a good name for themselves on ATIs chipsets.  I have a Sapphire X850 XT PE and have a Sapphire X1900 XTX in the mail to me right now.  There's no difference at all between all the brands of cards except maybe clock speeds depending on what type of memory they decide to put on the board.  Some brands put cheaper RAM chips on their cards to bring price down, but that also brings down any overclocking potential the card has.  But I've read that Sapphires' cards are 100% based on ATIs reference card and the only diff between them is that Sapphire puts their sticker on top of ATIs when they receive them to put their name on it.

I never had a prob with the card itself since I've had it except for the GPU cooler which should be replaced with a better, quieter one.  Just like for the X1900s so I've read.  I'm just gonna take the Zalman cooler off my  X850 and put it on my X1900 XTX.  That should be sufficient.

Last edited by T4rd (2006-06-08 05:58:36)

Guys, Sapphire builds ALL the X1900's for EVERYONE. 

That INCLUDES ATI-branded X1900's.  So other than a sticker on the cooler, a few data bits in the BIOS, and the contents of the box, they're ALL the same.   There is no "best", unless you're comparing warranty, since that varies depending on the "brand".  For a real chuckle, you can peel the sticker off a non-ATI brand's cooler, and Ruby is underneath. 

The IceQ from HIS is still built by Sapphire, but sent to HIS without a cooling fan, so HIS can install their own proprietary design, rather than using the ATI cooler.

There's also NO difference in clock frequencies on base model X1900XT and Crossfire Edition cards...all run the same speed...there are no factory overclocks (excluding the Sapphire Toxic X1900XTX, which comes with cheap watercooling, and is clocked a hair higher).

Long story short, unless you're horribly worried about long warranties or a particular company going under, there is no real reason to buy an ATI-branded card, the quality is the same for all of them. 

Buy the Sapphire. 

The saphire one is excellent, one I havent seen floating around is the tvcolor or something x1900xt which has an artic cooler on it from an nvidia graphics card which is NOTEABLY quieter than the stupid loud fan on the x1900xt