3rd Party ATI Radeon 8500 Boards

[AzraelDemitri]

I'm not sure if i should call it 3rd party or whatever but what I mean is has anyone ever tried an ATI Radeon 8500 Video Card whose board was made by a different company?

The only board manufacturers that I know of as of now are DFI and PowerMagic. I am really concerned about this because the local stores here in the Philippines say that the only ATI Radeon 8500 that they're going to ship are the ones made by PowerMagic. They told me to look at the website of PowerMagic (www.powermagic.com) and I found the site rather uninformative.

So I am looking for someone out there who has tried or knows someone who tried an ATI Radeon 8500 made by a different board manufacturer. I need to know if it's features and base performance is at par with the retail ATI Radeon 8500.

 

[anime]

i think other "3rd party ATI radeon8500 boards" are only clocked at 250/250 as the ATI made retail is 275/275. And also the third party ones are being sold for a lot cheaper price (I saw a post on hotdeals for arround $140 ish shipped). As retail ones still varying arrounf $250-$299. Other than that--there are no other significant difference.

 

[Rand]

ATi currently manufacturs all the third party Radeon based boards, so you neednt have any worry at all about quality as they are everybit as good as the boards branded under ATi's own name. The third party boards are clocked at 250/250 though, rather then the 275/275 of ATi's own retail board.

 

[Killrose]

Gigabyte and FIC ought to have their own boards released soon. Hopefully Ati does not constrain them to some sort of neutered specification.

 

[themadmonk]

You know, third party boards always add excitement to the product.