Sapphire is always cheaper?

[NoL]

Does anyone know exactly why sapphire is always cheaper than any one else?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102688

$169 ($154 after rebate)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161164

HIS for $247!

I never figured that out.

And x850xt is now $35 cheaper than when I bought it!

 

[FragTek]

I've noticed this too but I don't know the reasoning behind it.

HIS seems to always be uber expensive too (I imagine because of the use of their own HSF system).

 

[Tec]

Could it be Sapphire is one of the main partners of Ati and perhaps they buy alot of Ati's stock, even some of other brands cards come from Sapphire unbranded all they do is just stick their branded coolers in or stick their stickers on the coolers.

 

[NoL]

And HIS heatsinks as far as I've seen are bulkier in area's that arent even being cooled.

 

[Tec]

Well according to past reviews some of HIS products managed to overclock better then few other Ati's , not sure if it was heat related or better build but as the difference only 10mhz to 30mhz or near i assume it is the cooler doing its job then again considering the size of the cooler we cant say its great.

 

[WC Annihilus]

One thing you'll eventually start to notice, though with HIS, is that when they have rebates, they're generally massive, between $50-$150

 

[FarFarAway]

I really don't know why. I have a Sapphire X1900XT-X and its a great card with a very competitive bundle

 

[FragTek]

I imagine it's probably due to what Tec first posted about. Being a close partner and shareholder.

 

[FragTek]

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I really don't know why. I have a Sapphire X1900XT-X and its a great card with a very competitive bundle

That's a sexy card u have mate. Depending on how the G80's turn out I might have to check out the next gen ATI cards. Then I will have officially done a complete 180 from amd/nvidia to intel/ati

 

[FarFarAway]

Yep ATI's next gen is rumoured to be pretty sexy :yumyum:

 

[FragTek]

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Yep ATI's next gen is rumoured to be pretty sexy :yumyum:

Any rumored specs on them yet? What's the codename anyhow?

 

[FarFarAway]

Here's what I could find:

The site's source also claimed that ATI's next-generation R600 part, expected to be fabbed at 80nm, will ship this coming October. The R590 has also been touted in the past as a 80nm die-shrink of the R580, better known as the basis of the Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition, X1900 XT and X1900 XTX. ®

And Here

Rick Bergman, ATI's Senior VP of PC Business has recently confirmed that their next-generation of desktop graphics processing units will feature a lot of the technology developed for the GPU inside Xbox 360.

The GPU inside Xbox 360 utilises a unified shader architecture, unifying the vertex engines and pixel engines together, meaning that it's possible to devote 100% of the silicon to which ever task is the bottleneck.

I've sent an e-mail to ATI to see if they'll comment at all

 

[FragTek]

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Thanks for that bit of info kemp. Hopefully you will get that response from ati regarding the new gpu