Revealed: Best Graphics Card Brands By Defect Rates

As per a Swiss retailer, Gainward has the lowest defect rates, while AsRock and Palit have the best warranty claim service.

Whenever one goes to buy a graphics card, one asks themselves these two questions. First, what GPU brand to select, Nvidia or AMD or Intel. Second, which graphics card board maker brand (AIB) to select.

That’s because while only two to three companies make GPUs, there are dozens of brands that make the graphics cards themselves by using those GPUs.

Why? Because Nvidia and AMD do not make whole graphics cards themselves. They only make the GPU and sell it to brands and decide the selling price. The AIBs later design the board themselves (based on reference design by Nvidia / AMD) and add extra functions like additional overclocks, extra fans, RGB and such.

In terms of AIBs, there are some of them that exclusively sell either Nvidia GeForce RTX or AMD Radeon RX graphics cards, not both. Then there are some that sell both of them.

If one checks hardware related places of sites like Reddit and other sites, a lot of graphics card-related questions are the same. Which brand to buy. Which brand has better warranty and service.

The reason is simple, all graphics card makers make the cards differently and with different quality.

So the question is, which graphics card brand is of top quality, suffers from the fewest defects and replaces or repairs graphics cards quickly. Now we have some idea about it.

Most And Least Defective Graphics Card Brands

A few days ago, Twitter (now known as X) based user @TechEpiphany, best known for sharing CPU, graphics cards and other top-selling lists from German retailer Mindfactory, has shared another important piece of information via a tweet.

In it, he shares the graphics card RMA rates from the Swiss retailer Digitec Galaxus. RMA means return merchandise authorization. In simple words, an RMA is when you contact the seller if defects are found in the product and ask for its replacement or repair during the warranty period.

As per the list shared by him, the Gainward has the lowest defect rate, with just 0.4% of graphics cards requiring RMA. The highest defect rate is found in graphics cards by Sapphire, which, while usually well-known for great-quality AMD graphics cards, holds the notorious distinction in this list.

In terms of warranty resolution and it’s duration, AsRock and Palit have the best service. Both brands on average take just two days to give the customer’s card back to them, which is massively impressive. On the other hand, Gigabyte, which not only has relatively higher failure rates but also takes the longest amount of time – 17 days – to get the product back to the customer.

Table And Explanation

For those who are not able to view the above image, we have made two tables and given an explanation on the numbers. To help one understand things better.

Defect rates:

Average warranty service claim days:

The above tables reveal a number of interesting things.

First, graphics cards from Nvidia brand partners have fewer defects, as per this list. While AMD graphics card brand partners seem to have more of defects being reported in them.

Second, Sapphire Technology, which makes reference cards for AMD with the AMD brand name, has higher defects in their own branded cards than AMD reference ones.

Third, Gainward, which in turn is owned by Palit, makes excellent graphics cards. This applies to both companies.

Fourth, if one is looking for AMD graphics cards, then they cannot go wrong with Powercolor, which seems to be the best for AMD. After that ASUS and MSI follows. But it should be mentioned that both are not primary AMD card makers, nor do they exclusively make AMD ones.

Fifth, ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte, which are considered to be the best, are not the best as per the list. This despite charging a premium over other brands. We guess this is probably because they are not specialized in graphics cards alone and sell other products too.

Conclusion

It must be mentioned that the list is based on two years of data and doesn’t reflect the latest trends. Here are the details of how things are counted in this list by the retailer. For example, EVGA has stopped selling graphics cards these days after their rumored altercation with Nvidia. Yet it’s in the list.

Another example is AsRock, which has also started selling Intel graphics cards relatively recently. So while we have mentioned Intel in the list, it’s more of an information. Not any suggestion that Intel cards from AsRock are in any way found to be defective. We have no exact information on that part. That’s because AsRock is more known for AMD graphics cards.

Not to forget, a lot of these graphics card brands are regional exclusives and are not found everywhere in the world. So if one wants to decide whether to purchase from a brand, one has to take that into consideration. Local presence matters too when it comes to warranty claims.

Another thing to mention is that this data is from Switzerland’s top retailer. So while it can be trusted, the real defect rate and warranty service can differ from region to region and country to country, especially the warranty service part. What we do know is that this gives us a fair idea of things.

Hopefully, we have helped potential buyers understand what the best brand is for them to select if defects alone are considered.