Talk:PowerColor

Where is the facts and stuff? This text is only telling how good they are, but not why and how...

Personal Review

Cards from PowerColor are "powered by ATI" cards, which means, they are not manufactured by ATI, but are using ATI components. This also means, that support from ATI is limited - support is done by the manufacturer. This is where PowerColor lacks. European users might get some problems with web-support, as it is supposedly only for North American users (tho one might be able to fake ones personal data). Another big difference between "powered by ATI" and "build by ATI" is, that 3rd party manufacturers supply their own modified drivers. Usually they are behind the actual ATI catalyst drivers (currently PowerColors drivers are behind by one revision). It also means, that it is possible that the catalyst drivers wont work with the card. This is the case with the 7.10 and 7.11 drivers for the HD2000 AGP series. ATIs response to me, as to why they are not supported yet, was that the drivers were not certified my Microsoft yet, and it was ATI's policy not to implement uncertified drivers into their catalyst driver bundle. I am not sure how this affects HD2000 AGP cards which are actually "build by ATI". ATI customer support said that drivers for that series will be implemented with Catalyst 7.12.

The download of the custom PowerColor drivers is horribly slow. If downloading with a download accelerator (2 lines maximum) I got about 10KB/s). Worst thing, the drivers dont work for my card (HD2000 series), even though they were supposed to work for exactly the model I got, so currently only the drivers from the supplied CD do work.

The Forum on PowerColors website is currently down (404 error). The knowledge base is not very extensive, but the answers are very well formulated and in depth. AngusMcMillan (talk) 10:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Update: Anyone who is owning a card from the HD2000 AGP series mentioned above can relax, ATI Catalyst 8.1 drivers do now support those (to be fully correct: I can verify that the HD2600 AGP card is supported). The drivers on the PowerColor website ar still at revision 7.10, but then this does not really matter if the newest Catalyst drivers are working. AngusMcMillan (talk) 08:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Just a reminder: Talk pages aren't forums. I'm not deleting your post because it does have some good points that we can use to improve the article.64.230.41.58 (talk) 07:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I've peeked at the page history and seen that you've tried to remove as much personal opinion as you could. That's probably good enough, seeing as how this page will likely see very little action. 64.230.41.58 (talk) 08:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, I know what you mean about the support site having poor english. I had a hard time believing I wasn't being phished or something! 64.230.41.58 (talk) 08:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Expanding article

The preceeding "review", while out of place, did touch on a subject that I would like to add to the article. Powercolor is somewhat known for having problems supporting its products. I live in North America, and have used their RMA service with great ease, but I have read many accounts of poor service. If anyone can find a reliable source documenting the quality of their RMA service, that would be great. For now, I am simply going to add info that their hardware support is limited to north america and cite their faq as the source.64.230.41.58 (talk) 07:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)