Whom Makes the best Radeon cards?

[dreamnite]

I have been thinking (not 100% sure yet) of upgrading my 9600pro, placing it in my 2nd comp and buying either a 9800pro or xt.

But when looking at my local supplier there are LOADS of different companies that make then, ATI, Saphire, Asus, powercolour etc etc. The price does vary up to £50.00. Is there a reason for this?

Do the supporting components in some cards differ from others?

I was just wondering why there was such a price range for what seems to be the same card, BTW this was based on 256meg cards.

Can anyone inlighten me?

Dreamnite

[tony_j15]

different ram types(samsung, hynix) different ram speeds, higher clocked cores, extra stuff added(like VIVO) all lead to price differences. Be careful with the 256mb cards, some of them have slow ram(3.2ns), make sure you ask about that. I would say ASUS and Hercules make the best, Saphire being a close second with powercolor in 3rd.

[sechs]

Who makes the best ATi cards.... Personally, I'd go with ATi. But that's just me... plenty of options.

[Xtreeme]

Tyan makes the tachyon series-they kick butt! Id say Sapphrie is #1 performance price ratio seeing how they are really exactly same spec and layout as ati's (cause they make them too-hehe). But that doesnt mean another co cant make better. Tyan has nice nice HSF and good features. Asus is always good. More choices better I say-specially when they are all soo good! So Id say Tyan-ATI BBA -Sapphire or Asus. PNY been having a bad time lately with heat issues and such.......well even some of their Geforce 3 series had heat issues so been little sketchy with them personally.

[RamonGTP]

I personally like the build by ATI cards the best. Sapphire is a pretty safe bet as long as you get the red PCB and not the black one. I've heard too many bad things about the black PCB.