Hi, I have question to anyone who knows the answer.
I have recently been checking out graphics cards and have found much to my confusion that there is both a AMD Radeon 7870 2GB card and HIS Radeon 7870 2GB card. My question is are there any differences between them? If so what are they, and how do they they affect my build overall? Thanks. Mr Yeti.
Ok, a lot of people just getting into the whole computer build thing have this question, so I want to explain it to you thouroughly rather than just giving you a short answer.
The short answer is that they are exactly the same, but let me go into some detail.
AMD makes the GPUs, and they will come out with their own PCB layout that they know works. This is what many people call a "reference card." AMD then gives this card to multiple manufacturers as a baseline for their video cards. The manufacturers (in AMD's case this would be Sapphire, XFX, HIS, MSI, Powercolor, Diamond, and a few others) then take the reference card, mass produce it, and put their branding on it. These reference cards are exactly the same thing that AMD put out there in the first place. The only differences between brands here are the type of cooler on the card, the length of the warranty, and sometimes certain brands will bundle free games with the card.
After manufacturers have had time to play with the reference cards a little, many of them will start coming out with their own cards with custom PCBs. The GPU on these new cards is still exactly the same, but the power delivery and cooling systems are amped up and more robust which allows more potential for overclocking as well as cooler operation. Some of these cards may even have more video RAM to play with than their reference card counter parts. Most non-reference cards will come with a factory overclock that is guaranteed to be stable, and you can usually push the clock speeds even further than that. Non-reference cards are great performers, especially if your'e going to be overclocking, but it is much harder to find water blocks for them if you're liquid cooling.
Basically, all reference cards are going to be exactly the same thing. Non-reference cards will be very similar with some design tweaks to make them perform even better.