AcceleratorX
Youngling
I was recently browsing through various marketplaces in hunt of an AMD R9 series graphics cards but did look at other models too. After checking out reviews, physically inspecting a bunch of cards and looking at alternatives, I realized a lot of people would be confused at the different options available and why certain brands cost more than others.
Some brands cost more than other brands not only because of bundled components, but also because of the quality of components used in it. You generally get what you pay for, and some brands do put in higher quality components than others. For this reason, I want to go through a brand-by-brand analysis for AMD graphics cards with specific focus to the R7/R9 series. However, many of these parameters apply also to older and future graphics cards.
Q: What is a good indicator of quality?
A: Reliability, cooling system, performance over time, PCB components, VRM circuitry and performance in litecoin mining! Yes, bitcoin mining is memory intensive, and the tighter the timings in the BIOS of the card, the better is the performance. This difference is usually not seen in gaming as those applications are more GPU intensive than memory intensive.
Q: Aren't they all the same cards anyway (R9 280X etc.)?
A: Yes and no. The GPU that powers them is the same. AMD issues only minimal guidelines for the safe working of the GPU product, board vendors are free to choose specific components as they wish. In fact, AMD can specify only the essentials for the working of the chip and the basic functionality a VRM circuitry should have. The rest is upto the manufacturer to choose circuits and components as per the requirement and cost.
Q: What about the AMD reference PCB and cooler?
A: The reference design is usually produced by Sapphire and serves as a guideline for a reliable, moderately overclockable and highly configurable card. Non-reference designs can both be better and worse than the reference design!
Q: Why would someone change something that works?
A: Lower cost, better overclocking potential, better cooling systems, brand differentiators, etc.
Q: So how do these cards differ?
A: All board vendors produce both reference and non-reference design PCBs for their products. The reference design PCBs are generally harder to find and restricted to the initial launch models or the first few months only. These PCBs have a minimum baseline quality level and also have AMD's reference BIOS attached to them, which is a guarantee of tight memory timings and fan control and a good indicator for BitCoin performance. The only way these cards can differ from brand to brand is in the brand of capacitors and chokes used (some may use Japanese, some may use Taiwanese, some may use Chinese).
The non-reference PCBs are designed for various purposes. Some are designed to consume less power and improve overclocking headroom. Some are designed simply to cut costs. They will differ on VRM circuitry and controllers, inductors and chokes, the brands and types of capacitors used, TMDS controllers, etc. - they may cut down on BIOS switches, not offer any backup BIOS, use an altogether different power delivery system, may have more/less/different display ports, less crossfire bridge connectors etc.
Of course, the bundles between all these brands differ, but I am not talking about that at the moment. My current concern is the differences in the cards themselves.
Now, we'll get on with the analysis of various brands I found in the Indian market:
1) Sapphire: This is the most popular brand in India and has good RMA from what I know. Unfortunately, being an AMD premium vendor gives it specific disadvantages. It receives the best GPUs from AMD as well as the worst GPUs from AMD before anyone else. This means that while the best OCing AMD GPU might come from Sapphire, it also means that Sapphire has the most "bad batch" GPUs in the AMD spectrum. In fact, Sapphire has the highest failure rate amongst AMD cards exactly due to this (still not significant at ~1.5%).
PCBs and quality: Sapphire generally make good BIOS with tight timings. The Dual-X cards are usually close to reference design. The Vapor-X designs are however inconsistent. Sometimes better and sometimes made with worse components than reference (usually poorer VRM when worse). Sapphire uses "decent" capacitors on its PCBs, usually Taiwanese but of good quality. The Toxic cards are very good and usually come with improved designs having better power delivery and superior quality capacitors and components.
So, my recommendation? I have had the worst luck with Sapphire in my life. Not a single Sapphire card I bought over the years still works. But if I were to buy Sapphire, I'd be looking for the Dual-X or the Toxic and not the Vapor-X.
2) Asus: They are the kings of quality. Asus generally uses good quality chokes, inductors and VRM circuitry even in low end models. In the mid range and higher end models they now have fully digital PWM based VRM with 8 or more phases, which is very good for power efficiency, temperatures and overclocking potential. They usually also offer complete voltage control on such models. This is why Asus costs more than other brands! Capacitors are usually high quality Taiwanese or Japanese.
All of Asus' cards confirm and exceed AMD's guidelines for PCB design and quality and the BIOS is the same way. These cards are good for 24/7 operation and bitcoin mining and are designed as such.
3) Gigabyte: Unlike Asus, Gigabyte tends to be inconsistent with it's VRM circuitry (using analog PWM instead of digital at times) and sometimes lock the voltages. Other than that these are good cards.
4) MSI: Similar to Gigabyte, but with the added caveat that the BIOS is generally not as fine tuned as either Asus or Gigabyte and MSI does not approve of bitcoin mining in general and considers it a "questionable" activity.
5) HIS: Every HIS card confirms to AMD specifications in all matters related to build quality and BIOS. For this reason this brand is as good an option as Asus is.
6) PowerColor and VTX3D: These two are basically the same brands in different packaging and different coolers. They share their PCBs. They generally have good PCBs and good VRM controllers (digital) but skimp on the cooling and VRM phases (usually having 4+1/4+2 designs). Recommended if you desire something cheap. Generally does not even come with connectors in the bundle!
7) XFX: This company regularly changes PCB design every few months for the same model names and numbers. They also do not have a consistency in components - two or three PCB designs are mixed with two or three memory configurations and used across various models. The VRM may be either analog or digital, usually analog without any voltage control. The PCB often has less layers, compensated by adding 2oz copper (but it is not enough). XFX employs various cost cutting measures and the BIOS is a mess with respect to fan control and memory timings because of the component variations (use 3 different memory chips for the same board, you have to set timings to the most conservative ones!). Definitely not recommended for bitcoin mining!
Capacitors used are Taiwanese or Japanese, of average quality (not good and not bad) and the coolers are not bad. XFX is a good choice if you are a budget gamer who will not want to extract max OC potential. Otherwise, please avoid this brand at all costs.
The XFX cards that a serious bitcoin miner/OCing gamer CAN buy are the Black Edition cards. They come with higher quality PCB, VRM and digital PWM voltage controller and are also having tighter memory timings in the BIOS. Avoid the rest.
So, in conclusion, I will recommend brands as follows:
Purely Quality and Reliability: Asus, Gigabyte, HIS (tier 1 brands)
Bitcoin Miner: Asus, HIS, Gigabyte, Sapphire
Price-to-performance/mid-tier quality with OC potential: MSI, Sapphire
Purely based on price/performance with reliability when not OCing (limited OC potential): VTX3D, PowerColor and XFX
Best bet: Reference PCB based cards of any brand (but on online store purchases you have little idea what PCB you are going to get)
I hope this post of mine gives a general idea of what you get with each brand of AMD cards. I might make one for NVIDIA too in the future based on feedback for this one.
Some brands cost more than other brands not only because of bundled components, but also because of the quality of components used in it. You generally get what you pay for, and some brands do put in higher quality components than others. For this reason, I want to go through a brand-by-brand analysis for AMD graphics cards with specific focus to the R7/R9 series. However, many of these parameters apply also to older and future graphics cards.
Q: What is a good indicator of quality?
A: Reliability, cooling system, performance over time, PCB components, VRM circuitry and performance in litecoin mining! Yes, bitcoin mining is memory intensive, and the tighter the timings in the BIOS of the card, the better is the performance. This difference is usually not seen in gaming as those applications are more GPU intensive than memory intensive.
Q: Aren't they all the same cards anyway (R9 280X etc.)?
A: Yes and no. The GPU that powers them is the same. AMD issues only minimal guidelines for the safe working of the GPU product, board vendors are free to choose specific components as they wish. In fact, AMD can specify only the essentials for the working of the chip and the basic functionality a VRM circuitry should have. The rest is upto the manufacturer to choose circuits and components as per the requirement and cost.
Q: What about the AMD reference PCB and cooler?
A: The reference design is usually produced by Sapphire and serves as a guideline for a reliable, moderately overclockable and highly configurable card. Non-reference designs can both be better and worse than the reference design!
Q: Why would someone change something that works?
A: Lower cost, better overclocking potential, better cooling systems, brand differentiators, etc.
Q: So how do these cards differ?
A: All board vendors produce both reference and non-reference design PCBs for their products. The reference design PCBs are generally harder to find and restricted to the initial launch models or the first few months only. These PCBs have a minimum baseline quality level and also have AMD's reference BIOS attached to them, which is a guarantee of tight memory timings and fan control and a good indicator for BitCoin performance. The only way these cards can differ from brand to brand is in the brand of capacitors and chokes used (some may use Japanese, some may use Taiwanese, some may use Chinese).
The non-reference PCBs are designed for various purposes. Some are designed to consume less power and improve overclocking headroom. Some are designed simply to cut costs. They will differ on VRM circuitry and controllers, inductors and chokes, the brands and types of capacitors used, TMDS controllers, etc. - they may cut down on BIOS switches, not offer any backup BIOS, use an altogether different power delivery system, may have more/less/different display ports, less crossfire bridge connectors etc.
Of course, the bundles between all these brands differ, but I am not talking about that at the moment. My current concern is the differences in the cards themselves.
Now, we'll get on with the analysis of various brands I found in the Indian market:
1) Sapphire: This is the most popular brand in India and has good RMA from what I know. Unfortunately, being an AMD premium vendor gives it specific disadvantages. It receives the best GPUs from AMD as well as the worst GPUs from AMD before anyone else. This means that while the best OCing AMD GPU might come from Sapphire, it also means that Sapphire has the most "bad batch" GPUs in the AMD spectrum. In fact, Sapphire has the highest failure rate amongst AMD cards exactly due to this (still not significant at ~1.5%).
PCBs and quality: Sapphire generally make good BIOS with tight timings. The Dual-X cards are usually close to reference design. The Vapor-X designs are however inconsistent. Sometimes better and sometimes made with worse components than reference (usually poorer VRM when worse). Sapphire uses "decent" capacitors on its PCBs, usually Taiwanese but of good quality. The Toxic cards are very good and usually come with improved designs having better power delivery and superior quality capacitors and components.
So, my recommendation? I have had the worst luck with Sapphire in my life. Not a single Sapphire card I bought over the years still works. But if I were to buy Sapphire, I'd be looking for the Dual-X or the Toxic and not the Vapor-X.
2) Asus: They are the kings of quality. Asus generally uses good quality chokes, inductors and VRM circuitry even in low end models. In the mid range and higher end models they now have fully digital PWM based VRM with 8 or more phases, which is very good for power efficiency, temperatures and overclocking potential. They usually also offer complete voltage control on such models. This is why Asus costs more than other brands! Capacitors are usually high quality Taiwanese or Japanese.
All of Asus' cards confirm and exceed AMD's guidelines for PCB design and quality and the BIOS is the same way. These cards are good for 24/7 operation and bitcoin mining and are designed as such.
3) Gigabyte: Unlike Asus, Gigabyte tends to be inconsistent with it's VRM circuitry (using analog PWM instead of digital at times) and sometimes lock the voltages. Other than that these are good cards.
4) MSI: Similar to Gigabyte, but with the added caveat that the BIOS is generally not as fine tuned as either Asus or Gigabyte and MSI does not approve of bitcoin mining in general and considers it a "questionable" activity.
5) HIS: Every HIS card confirms to AMD specifications in all matters related to build quality and BIOS. For this reason this brand is as good an option as Asus is.
6) PowerColor and VTX3D: These two are basically the same brands in different packaging and different coolers. They share their PCBs. They generally have good PCBs and good VRM controllers (digital) but skimp on the cooling and VRM phases (usually having 4+1/4+2 designs). Recommended if you desire something cheap. Generally does not even come with connectors in the bundle!
7) XFX: This company regularly changes PCB design every few months for the same model names and numbers. They also do not have a consistency in components - two or three PCB designs are mixed with two or three memory configurations and used across various models. The VRM may be either analog or digital, usually analog without any voltage control. The PCB often has less layers, compensated by adding 2oz copper (but it is not enough). XFX employs various cost cutting measures and the BIOS is a mess with respect to fan control and memory timings because of the component variations (use 3 different memory chips for the same board, you have to set timings to the most conservative ones!). Definitely not recommended for bitcoin mining!
Capacitors used are Taiwanese or Japanese, of average quality (not good and not bad) and the coolers are not bad. XFX is a good choice if you are a budget gamer who will not want to extract max OC potential. Otherwise, please avoid this brand at all costs.
The XFX cards that a serious bitcoin miner/OCing gamer CAN buy are the Black Edition cards. They come with higher quality PCB, VRM and digital PWM voltage controller and are also having tighter memory timings in the BIOS. Avoid the rest.
So, in conclusion, I will recommend brands as follows:
Purely Quality and Reliability: Asus, Gigabyte, HIS (tier 1 brands)
Bitcoin Miner: Asus, HIS, Gigabyte, Sapphire
Price-to-performance/mid-tier quality with OC potential: MSI, Sapphire
Purely based on price/performance with reliability when not OCing (limited OC potential): VTX3D, PowerColor and XFX
Best bet: Reference PCB based cards of any brand (but on online store purchases you have little idea what PCB you are going to get)
I hope this post of mine gives a general idea of what you get with each brand of AMD cards. I might make one for NVIDIA too in the future based on feedback for this one.
Integrate sections with the context focusing on cooling, Fans/Speed/Noise levels at load and idle, performance with respect to ambient temperature. Any observations or collected data regarding OCing against AIR and/or liquid if possible. It will help develop the composition on a critically important factor thus improving the quality of information. AMD cards roundups demand a cooling/noise perspective.
