Saphire or PowerColor for an HD7770 graphics card?

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dman

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#109416 19-Sep-2012 12:05

After researching all evening I've come to the conclusion a Radeon HD7770 is best for my needs, but I'm not sure which of these two brands I should go for:

http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?j=1130143,1130317

Background:

I currently spent 100% of my time using Ubuntu, but being tempted back to dabble in my Windows partition by the thought of playing DayZ & perhaps some others, thus I need a basic graphics card!

Athlon II X2 245 CPU

2x 2gigs DDR3 RAM

300W PSU

Thanks in advance! :)

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dman

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#688122 19-Sep-2012 12:09

Hmmm.... at a guess, I might be able to answer my own question? One is only carried by 8 stores, the other by 36! That must surely be hinting at saying something...

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Lias

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#688132 19-Sep-2012 12:29

Sapphire is generally a safe bet.

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gjm

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#688173 19-Sep-2012 13:41

Ive had a few different sapphire cards over the years...never had a problem with them. Never had a powercolor so cant comment.

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Ragnor

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#688178 19-Sep-2012 14:00

They will be implementations of the same reference design, only differences will be in the PCB color and heatsink most likely.

Therefore you can make the decision based purely on looks ie: which colour PCB and which style of heat sink you like the look of.

dman

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#688341 19-Sep-2012 17:41

The pricespy link I provided seems to show a LOT of differences...
Different number of slots.
Different number of monitors supported at once.
Different DirectX.

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richms

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#688400 19-Sep-2012 20:02

Pricespy is moreoften wrong than not with regards to specs of hardware.

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dman

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#688439 19-Sep-2012 20:55

Indeed, a little more digging and I found the DirectX 11 vs 11.1 is wrong. on PriceSpy They both are DirectX 11.1
Thanks

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dman

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#688908 20-Sep-2012 15:47

Looks like the less slots (1 vs 2) for the PowerColor is a real difference:
http://www.techpowerup.com/168346/PowerColor-Launches-its-Single-Slot-Low-Profile-Radeon-HD-7750-Graphics-Card.html

I can't imagine any cooling corners they've cut to squeeze it down to a single slot should be a significant problem to worry about for the HD 7750? As it is such a low power card anyway.

Thus the PowerColor seems like the better choice, as it appears to be the only positive difference between the two. However, I've got the space anyway as I have a micro-ATX mini tower (but I guess handy for the future if I ever wish to switch to miniITX? although I doubt I'd bother switching just to compact it as I rarely transport it about).

Maybe the only reason to go for a single slot card is if I wish to sometime in the future upgrade with crossfire but still fit both graphics cards inside my micro-ATX mini tower? (although scratch that, I just realised my motherboard doesn't support Crossfire? http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3478#sp Although I'd love it if somebody can point out I'm wrong!!)

https://www.youtube.com/c/SoundSpeeding