[mario74]

Re: Which ATI 6870

If you don't mind paying a little extra I would go with XFX. They are good quality cards and are easier to sell (if you plan on future upgrades) due to their life time transferable warranty(once only). I myself have 1 Gigabyte card and 1 Radeon card.Love Gigabyte's cooling solution. My Gigabyte card is on top and runs cooler than the Radeon. Both overclock well. Even though Diamond Makes Radeon cards I would not suggest them as I have owned Diamond cards and they scammed people with some 4850's. They sold their diamond vipers like they were some hot item. Hot being the operative word, idled at 80c. Turns out they were crappy Radeon cards with a terrible cooling solution(had to keep the fan at 70% to get it to idle 50c).
In short it's personal preference and I would suggest you read customer comments when deciding. Look at different sites and see what customers have to say and what there experiences are.

 

[mario74]

Re: Which ATI 6870

If your going to use any software I would use ATI's Catalyst Control Centre no mater what brand of card you use. With ATI's new CCC v12:01 you will have control of not just overclocking and graphics settings, but you will be able modify and create application profiles of your own which is great if you like to play older games.

 

[mario74]

Re: Which ATI 6870

Im the same way. I prefer to use the driver only. CCC just has too many bugs.

Interesting considering I've never experienced problems with CCC. Since I have crossfire I don't have a choice but to use it and I will admit when I ran a single card I didn't use it either. But since ATI removed the application profiles from the driver back in 2010 without CCC you can't take advantage of the profiles. Before anybody says app profiles are not for a single card application or are in the driver, email AMD support and ask them first as I already have had to settle this dispute with someone else. Made a 100 bucks off that bet.

 

[mario74]

Re: Which ATI 6870

One other advantage I forgot to mention. With CCC you can take advantage of something called parallel processing. What this does is enable your system to use your GPU instead of your CPU for anything video related.