Hey everyone. Just thought I'd share my recent personal experience and, heck, vent a little bit.

Used to be mostly an Nvidia guy. Switched over to AMD/ATI in early 2010 with the purchase of a Radeon 5870 by HIS. Was pretty happy with it, although I made the mistake of pairing an AMD card with a motherboard that had an Nvidia chipset. Wasn't aware at the time that this isn't an ideal thing to do. Still, I only encountered a few minor problems.

Almost two years later, I want to sell it to a coworker so I can upgrade to a 6970. At that point the fan started dying; still, he purchased an aftermarket cooler, and the card is still running to this day.

Okay, so, that leaves me with the 6970, also by HIS, and I pushed that thing pretty hard with Eyefinity. But a few weeks ago it starts to fail on me -- games are crashing with flickering and corruption on the screen, with eventual system freezes/lockups. At one point when I uninstalled the drivers and wanted to do a sweep, my system wouldn't even POST with that card installed.

Really, this happened too soon. I wasn't truly planning on upgrading that card yet, since I only had it for about seven or eight months. But I'm a big spoiled brat, and I don't have the patience to go through the RMA process (based on so many horror stories I've read about).

So ......... I simply bought a Gigabyte 7950 Windforce to replace it. It's faster, cooler, quieter, and so far I'm very happy with it.

Of course, everyone's mileage varies. I'm not saying HIS is total cr4p. They do put together a nice package, and they have plenty of award-winning cards. No matter what brand you go with, it's always a bit of a gamble.

But ... I just can't help but think I'm going to try out the other AMD partners for the time being.

Peace.