Power Color branded Radeons, any good?

[F1]

What are peoples thoughts on this Power Color? They seem to be readily available and cheaper tham some of the other brands. Worth considering or should i stick with Sapphire & Ati manufactured cards?

 

[Harabecw]

Go with a Bitchin'Fast 3D 2000.

 

[dguy6789]

Power color is good. I have a power color radeon 9000 pro 128MB and it runs fast, with great image quality, and is very stable. If you can get it cheaper with power color, go for it.

 

[spanky]

i wouldn't buy a sapphire... click here for the reason...

 

[Peter]

Just as all the other 3rd party ATi card builders (see spanky's thread), PowerColor make a wide range of cards from any given ATi chip, from extreme budget to top performance. Figure out exactly what you want, then buy a card with suitable specification.

 

[Blooz1]

Go ask this question at Rage3d.com, and see what you'll get for answers......

 

[Booster]

I wouldn't risk that. These cards may be good, and stable, but they don't have the same 2D quality as original ATI cards (neither Sapphire ones are save for the highest end, like the 9700, which are almost all equal).

 

[Guspaz]

I have a PowerColor (9700 Pro), and everything is peachy on the hardware side, except:

1) It doesn't OC to Radeon 9800 Pro levels (To be expected, but still, I'm sad)
2) It has the rolling-line problem, and I'm going to have to RMA it. I've almost solved the problem by using the DVI->VGA adapter, but it's very large and inconvienient.

Other than those two issues, go for it.

Oh, except, cat 3.4 drivers have horrible performance in Half-Life... Natural-Selection to be specific.

 

[Guspaz]

Originally posted by: Harabecw
Go with a Bitchin'Fast 3D 2000.

Dunno bout that, I prefer the Bausch and Lomb 3D Flavoured Ice Lolly.

 

[Rogozhin]

Your best bet is to go to the forums at rage3d.com and ask over there, many owners of those cards.

I'm happy with my sapphire but I've not owned a powercolor.

rogo

 

[Arrowslinger]

If it has the Infineon 3.3 RAM, its rated at 333MHZ, I have it on my PowerColor 9700 Pro and can only push my card to 360/325 without artifacts.

The 2.5 is rated at 400 MHz but I think its only on the sapphire, hercules and built by cards?

 

[squidman]

First things first:

1) To powercolor users: notice extreme resemblance to ATI's own boards? Notice the "rev. Axx"? Notice the lack of the ATI's sticker? Well, if u havent figured it out yet - Powercolor does NOT make 9700 boards. They are made in Canada, by ATI, on ATI's plant, and is ABSOLUTELY THE SAME, as ATI's 9700, except for the stickers on the back.

2) Powercolor is overclocked to 9700 PRO just like that. Cmon, they do have the smae chip cooler, and the chip. Not to overclock - is just plain stupid. At least the core.

3) Sapphire is gay. It builds its cards+HSF by itself. Its heatsinks are usually ineffective.

4) FIC is horrid.

5) I got mine yesterday. Awesome performance (Unreal 2 at AA and AF? Hell yeah). I got rolling lines only AFTER the BIO Post report, and BEFORE indows starts up. I dunno what causes it. DOS games (Warcraft 1 and 2, Dungeon keeper 1) run just fine. Also, this only happens under WinME. But it doesnt bother me. Also, CAT3.4 drivers make IGI2 trip (it jerks inside buildings, funky textures outside).

6) The only thing that lacks, is the temperature monitor. I have no idea, what t's my memory and chip are at.

7) THe 6 "Lite" games are not games at all. Think of them as "less, than a preiew"

8) Evo 4x4 2 is okay, but gets really boring in a while, and doesnt show what a card can do. Couple of UT2k3 demos'd be nice.

Cool card.

 

[squidman]

Originally posted by: Arrowslinger
If it has the Infineon 3.3 RAM, its rated at 333MHZ, I have it on my PowerColor 9700 Pro and can only push my card to 360/325 without artifacts.

The 2.5 is rated at 400 MHz but I think its only on the sapphire, hercules and built by cards?

I got Infinion 3.3 on my non-pro.

 

[Arrowslinger]

OOPS!

I posted the first part without reading your reply clearly, your non pro should overclock well, have you thought about soft modding it?

Again:

PowerColor cards are built in Taiwan, they are a partner company with ati.

An ATI Partner Product is a graphics board that is based on an ATI chipset but manufactured by a company other than ATI. These other manufacturers, sometimes referred to as Original Design Manufacturers (ODM?s) or Add-in Board (AIB) manufacturers, buy ATI graphics chips and design their own board product around it. This allows them to decide what product features, performance and pricing are best suited to the marketplace. This provides consumers with a greater choice in graphics products to meet their configuration, performance or budget needs while delivering the technical excellence found in ATI graphics chips.

 

[Guspaz]

There are currently no soft-mods available for any 9700 series cards.

There are the 9800 mods, but those are not true soft-mods, merely driver hacks to change your card's ID.

 

[Arrowslinger]

Your right the soft mod I was refering to is a hack that lets you use an optimized driver path that was originally written for the 9800. But some say the Cat 3.4's did the same thing.

 

[squidman]

How do u softmod?

 

[Arrowslinger]

If your running the cat 3.4's you may not want to try these?

http://www.omegacorner.com/ati.htm (built in 9800 mod)

Im using them and really like the performance increase in my games.

 

[Harabecw]

I thought the 3.4 drivers basically gave the 9700 the same improvements as the 9700->9800 softmod as Arrow said. so just use these

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: F1
What are peoples thoughts on this Power Color? They seem to be readily available and cheaper tham some of the other brands. Worth considering or should i stick with Sapphire & Ati manufactured cards?

I've only ever had problems with Power Color video cards so I can't recommend them, Sapphire are much better. As in everything you get what you pay for, they are cheaper than other brands for a good reason.

 

[FluxCap]

Sapphire cards are great cards. Nearly ATI quality.

 

[Mavrick007]

Sapphire supposedly makes ATI's cards for them even so the Sapphire branded card should be about the same as the ATI "built by ATI card".

 

[squidman]

My powercolor was made in Canada: i see the plant sticker, it has canadian index (cn instead of tw for taiwan), and canadian country index on the barcode. I've also read that ATI sells some of its cards to 3rd party vendors to make money. Quite understandable. No hustle, yet, ATI gets the dollaz. Gotta love powercolor.

 

[MrPabulum]

From what I have read on the Rage3D boards, if you can't get an ATI Radeon 9500/9700, then Sapphire is the next best thing. I have a Sapphire 9700 soft-modded to a 9700 Pro, currently running at 340/320, flawlessly I might add. The Cat3.4s are working fine. Powercolor appears to be a mixed bag; some folks have had great experiences and others...not so much. Hope this helps!

 

[FacelessNobody]

Anything's better than Sapphire. The Radeon 8500LE I had would not display properly through the S-Video output. Everything was a wavy mess. That card also showed wavy lines on the screen through the D-sub out to my Hitachi CRT. When I was building my system (the one in my sig) I started with the Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro. The first card I got would lock up after a few minutes of 3D use, and eventually failed completely. It's replacement was bad right away, too. It would display gibberish on startup, and repeated the letters "D, i, c" over and over again in psychedelic colors. Stupid thing called me a Dic, so I sent it back to Newegg for a full refund. Picked up an ATi branded Radeon 9700 Pro and all was well.