Whats the difference between for example, an ATI Radeon SAPPHIRE video card ( regurdless of the model number ) and an ATI Radeon video card? whats the Sapphire part? I know a local shop that only sells Sapphire type cards, and a shop near by sells the same looking card same model same graphics and everything but without the word "Sapphire"... Any takers?|||Sapphire is just the manufacturer. ATI is the company that makes the chipset, Radeon is the model category. Just like you'll see BFG, EVGA, etc. for the NVidia chipsets (and GeForce is their most popular model at the moment).|||These days there are Sapphire, HIS, XFX, and many other aftermarket companies.
Meaning that in addition to ATI making their own graphics chip and graphics board to put the chip on, ATI also sends them the graphics chip and these aftermarket companies make their own graphics card with that chip with their own factory settings such as core clock speed, memory clock speed, and implement their own cooling design with their own aftermarket fan.
Usually, these aftermarket companies cost more than buying straight from ATI (ie. buying a card based on ATI's factory's specs) because they do some minor overclocking to the chip. So if you look carefully, these aftermarket cards will have a higher core and memory clock speed than the standard ATI reference card. Also, I'm sure if you look closely at the core and memory speeds of these aftermarket cards by Amaze, HIS, and Sapphire, you'll see that they're different. This is because different aftermarket companies customize them to different extents.
My advice is if you're going to overclock it, buy the card with the best cooling design. Else, just buy the card with the highest core and memory speed.
Take care.
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