Radeon HD 7870 or 7850 Brand Recommendations Please
 

Looking at getting a Radeon HD 7870 or 7850 2GB gpu.

Please suggest best brand for bios/drive updates and customer support.

Using multi-monitor setup, 2d and 3d CAD, graphics arts, some gaming, etc.

I personally have had great luck with XFX for customer support and service. Have heard good things about asus as well.

Does XFX updates its drivers very often?

Thats down to AMD not the board partner..

Find the best price-performance you can (thats to say something with a custom cooler thats about the same price as a reference version)
Beyond that it's brand preference mostly, maybe the location of an RMA centre.

I would check out what cad and the other packages recommend as an nvidia may well be better for those.. you need to check.

MSI Twin Frozr.

Driver updates come from AMD directly

i prefer Sapphire for AMD cards. I bought a Sapphire 7870 2GB OC and have been very happy with its performance in BF 3 and the like.

MSI/Sapphire about equivalent though warranty wise at least for Canada, MSI is the better pick(vancouver vs USA to return)
overall
MSI/Sapphire-XFX--ASUS---Gigabyte---HIS/Powercolor-------Visiontek and rest
MSI/Sapphire with thier respective dual fan coolers being the vaporX style and TwinFrozr style this time aorund are great coolers compred to most of the rest, are quite good overclockers, are resonably quiet, and properly cool the entire card.'
7850 the Asus one is apprently a great card for its overclocking prowess, 9/10 even matching a 7870 oc performance levels which says alot. but the DCII cooler(this time) is not nearly as good as sapphire/msi dual fan coolers either.

However, on this note, I would go with a Radeon 7870XT(sapphire)7870Myst(powercolor) or even a 7950 VaporX from sapphire. 7870XT is essentially a slightly cut down 7950 as in same bus width, slightly less memory, slightly less shader and such, but quite comparable performance, and less costly.