Recently I've had a ton of issues with my computer and I have now declared that it has to do with my Sapphire 7950 OC that's powered by AMD. The main issue was that it would cut the video and audio after a few seconds randomly in a gaming session and then freezing my computer so that I am forced to do a hard reboot with the power button (many heart attacks were had). I just wanted everyone here to know that I think you should stay away from AMD graphics solutions. I've had my issues with it and so far my first experience with a high end AMD card has not been so good. Right now I'm running my old 512mb 9800GT from EVGA (Nvidia if you can't tell). It works fine and can even play GTA IV at 40fps +-5fps. For a 5-6 year old card.. crazy right, that it still works. I'll run this for a while until I can get a refund or something to buy an Nvidia card since Sapphire apparently has a 24 month warranty and it's only been 13 months so far since I got the AMD card. Long story short, stay away from AMD and specially MSI since I've had some BS with the current MSI board I'm running everything on. Pictures for reference to what has happened today: My message to people thinking of buying AMD cards https://puu.sh/2IOx2/0713f574dd.jpg The 9800GT running in my system right now https://puu.sh/2IOw9/6352a1ba1c.jpg
I never go for anything other than Nvidia/Radeon either way. I'm more on the NVidia side of things though since I've NEVER had issues with their cards. Hope you're able to get a refund Also, here's my current card. It's old, but it still runs BF3 at max with no fps issues.
I've always had issues of some sort with ATI cards, so it does not surprise me. Get something like my card - EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Newegg.com
Yeah, you see I just got an answer to my e-mail that I sent last night saying that I could send it in to the retailer I bought it from so they could test the card out. Hopefully if I get refunded I'll just wait for my salary and from there on I have a few choices to go with: - GTX 670 SLI - GTX 690 - GTX TITAN EDIT: I decided to take apart the 9800GT assuming it's been decades since it was last cleaned and I was shocked at the amount of thermal compound they've used on this card when they manufacture them so I re-applied some Noctua NT-H1 after cleaning out the dust and old compound. When I booted into Windows I had pretty good tempratures but the drivers kept crashing every 20 seconds so I began to worry. I opened up the card again and this time applied the Cooler Master thermal compound that came free with my Hyper 212 Evo. The result was flawless, no driver crashes what so ever. I guess Nvidia must be racists to Noctua or something lol, since NT-H1 is non-conductive and should in theory outperform stock CM compound. https://puu.sh/2JxDy/214a6844c6.jpg
The RMA mail I sent to my retailer was verified and all ok so I packed it up and I'm going to ship it tonight so they can test the card in a few days and hopefully give me a refund so I can get something else that would at least be something proper. Box within a box! It's.. This joke is old. https://puu.sh/2K6kN/4f298f7c8a.jpg EDIT: I just shipped the card as of the edit time of this post, and I seriously just don't hope the fact that the card will somewhat be acting all normal like it's supposed to when it's cause me problems.
