SAPPHIRE 100281-3SR Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/ Eyefinity

Pros: Great dollar/frames ratio. Fast card even if "long in the tooth old". It still keeps up late 2011 mid-range cards.

Cons: As can be seen by other reviews the rebate is a joke. They were not even going to give me the $20 in the form of a rebate check. They were going to send me a $20 AMEX reward card. Sheesh. Contacted rebate processing center to no avail. I just gave up because it's not worth the effort. When purchasing a Sapphire card (which has been a good card for me) just assume the rebate will never come your way and price the card accordingly.

Pros: I love this card. I ran it with an intel qx6850 core 2 quad at 3.6Ghz and it never broke a sweat. I had to upgrade to an i7 just to push this thing above 90% usage.

Cons: I've had some extreme instability, but it's always ended up being drivers and not the card. ATI should really be ashamed at their drivers the last few years. Nvidia's drivers used to be a joke but it seems the rolls have changed.

Other Thoughts: I want to buy a second one for crossfire now!

Pros: Pretty powerful card that can run everything on high settings with low noise.

Cons: Everything runs smooth on the desktop but as soon as I boot into a game, it all goes down hill. I've had at least one gray screen/driver crash in about 90% of the games I've played which is annoying, but I kept updating the drivers hoping for a fix. I booted up Batman Arkham Asylum and had the driver crash 5 times in the first 30 minutes. I was just about to spend $500.00 to buy a new video card, when I decided to try underclocking the card. I've played 10 hours now without a single issue.

Other Thoughts: This was my second Ati card that I've bought but I think I'll go back to Nvidia for my next graphics card purchase.

Pros: Runs games like Starcraft 2, Portal 2 on high settings easily.

Cons: I've had it for 8 months and its just never been 100% there. It's not grossly unstable, but it's far from reliable. I've experienced a frequently reported problem with this line of cards: flickering on a second monitor when the card switches between 2d and 3d modes (search for "second monitor flicker.")

I also get frequent unpredictable graphical crashes while gaming. Sometimes with the "display driver stopped responding and has recovered error." Sometimes with the "gray screen of death/stripes" issue. I've even had a one or two BSODs.

tldr: Unstable, would not buy again.

Other Thoughts: Time to buy a new card. :-/

Pros: Great card fast plays BFBC2 without a glich

Cons: Sapphire rebate process sucks took over 6 months. 4 emails and 2 phones to get rebate just not worth the trouble

Other Thoughts: I thought I would try Sapphire cards heard only bad things other than the rebate process it's a great card but I think next time I will stick with XFX cards

Pros: was a good card for the price when I bought it, and when it would work.

Cons: First card I bought lasted a month or two, ended up getting artifacts so I got it replaced by newegg. Second card is now 6 months old, for the past 4 months the card while booting would lose video signal and fan would go to high speed. Would need to remove power from motherboard then reboot and it would usually be stable and not fail. As of last week, it would do it every time booting and now does it all the time.
sending emails to sapphire trying to get it warrantied. supposed to have a 2 year warranty.
Contacting sapphire not easy, phone number provided by newegg doesn't work, get no answer after trying numerous times for 3 days.
Threw an old nvidia card in and i am able to boot and type this.

Other Thoughts: other thoughts? yeah, I'm very upset. $299 plus a ship back got me 2 bad graphics cards. will not buy from sapphire again unless they somehow wow me with their warranty support and a replacement card that doesn't fail.

Pros: good price for a 5870

Cons: but not for one that blanks out after playing a game for a while. i bought this b/c it was a good deal at the time. i guess 200 dollars for a card that crashes your p/c in games is not such a great deal. now im stuck with it and have to downgrade to my 5850 xfx which was at least rock solid.

Pros: Great card, 5 eggs for the card.

Cons: Mailed in rebate on 12/30/10, a day after I got the card and well within the rebate time-frame. Waited until the end of Jan to ask about my "rapid processing for $4" rebate since it still said waiting for documents. They told me that they hadn't yet received the paperwork! A month later they claimed that the paperwork was incomplete and the invoice from Newegg had no date on it! The rebate was a scam!

Other Thoughts: 5 eggs for Newegg, excellent service and fast turnaround.
0 eggs for Sapphire for scamming consumers with their fake rebates.

Pros: The card works as intended with no issues. A moderate upgrade from my GTS8800.

Cons: A bit slow for newer DX11 games on high or ultra settings. On higher settings for Rift or City of Heroes the fps is 15-25. If you are happy with medium to high quality video settings then this card should work ok for you.

Other Thoughts: When this card came out it was the big dog on the block. It now is now is a mid level card. If you are going to spend $200 to buy this card, consider paying $100 more and get a faster card. I wish I did.

Pros: 5870 Cards in Crossfire are fast! More than you need for current games.

Cons: I purchased two cards for a crossfire setup Unfortunately, one card was defective. Having two identical cards, installing one at a time, & running benchmarks, I was able to rule out other software or hardware issues being the problem
Symptoms I was having with the bad card.
-displays grey screens with vertical lines
-crashes to BSOD screens
-freezes the computer screen while the sound plays
-displays random artifacts on the screen
-give a "display driver has failed" error and crashes 3D -video applications
These would occur when running the card in demanding gaming situations or running Unigine heaven Benchmark.
My system did not display any high temperatures. I even checked the temperatures independently with an IR thermometer. The other card worked flawlessly in the same gaming and benchmarking situations.

Other Thoughts: I'm glad I held off on sending the UPC's in for rebate before I fully tested the cards. I'd rather deal with Newegg than have to go through Sapphire.