When you look at the AMD Radeon graphics card market today, there are only a couple AIB manufacturers that stand out. One of those is XFX. They don’t really have the coolest designs (no pun intended) nor do they have the chapest cards either. But, what attracts most people to their cards is their double lifetime warranty and their “modder friendliness”.

Well, that’s all about to change because XFX has recently discontinued their double lifetime warranty and are moving into a more standard x year warranty starting with their new 7000 series video cards. The reason? Well, according to XFX, the “Double Lifetime warranty just wasn’t sustainable and decided against offering it on HD 7900-series cards”. Obviously, this only affects the duration of the graphics card’s warranty and not the quality of service you’ve come to expect from XFX.

Anyway, enough of that. What kind of warranty are we looking at now?

–  For XFX Radeon HD 7000 Series Dual Fan (Double Dissipation Edition) Graphics Cards or XFX Radeon HD 7000 Series Graphics Cards with 10-digit model numbers ending in “R” (example: “FX-797A-TDFR”), register the product within 30 days of purchase and you will receive a lifetime warranty. Otherwise, you will get the standard 2 year warranty. The difference between the lifetime and double lifetime being that double lifetime is transferable when the card is resold while lifetime is not.

–  For the HD 7970 Core Edition (FX797ATNFC), XFX has reduced the warranty to 2 years. 

More warranty information can be found at XFX’s website.

For those of you interested, here are the warranty periods on a couple other AMD AIB manufacturers. I’m going off Newegg here, so if you spot some inconsistencies or misinformation, feel free to drop a comment below.

  • ASUS – 3 years parts and labor
  • MSI – 3 years parts, 2 years labor
  • Gigabyte – 3 years parts and labor
  • Sapphire – 2 years parts and labor
  • PowerColor – 2 years parts and labor
  • VisionTek – Lifetime; registration required within 30 days of purchase. Otherwise, 1 year parts and labor.
Bottom line, if you’re looking for a brand new HD 7970 and you’re the kind of guy who buys a graphics card to use for the next 15 years, be sure to pick up a XFX Double Dissipation Edition card or a VisionTek card.

Source: Hardware Canucks