No, Sapphire doesn’t make AMD’s reference cards.

Wow thanks for clearing that up. I was a long time believer (until now) that sapphire did make the reference cards for AMD. Also tune into the PcWorld's Full Nerd podcast at times but this would have probably passed me by if you didn't bring it up.

For those wondering about the green side - its PNY that makes Nvidia's reference cards as well as all of the quadra cards.

Wait, so My 6800XT from AMD.com is a Zotac card!?!

Sapphire used to make all the ATi cards before ATi moved to AIB partners and then later was purchased by AMD, IIRC. Probably where the confusion exists.

Thanks and good work! That clarifies a lot of things.

Pretty good sum, I honestly knew something like Sapphire or Powercolor makes AMD referece cards, but good that someone is busting these kind of myths. Great work!

Whew! Good thing I was sitting down for this information. XD

Thank you for the information! I also thought that Sapphire made the ref. cards.

this is interesting information, thanks!

Doesn't Zotac only sell Nvidia GPUs under their brand? But their parent company makes reference AMD cards?

Mac from IASIP: "I play both sides, so that I always come out on top"

It's actually PC Partner Group, the company that sells video cards under the ZOTAC brand.

AFAIK Sapphire, Inc. and PC Partner Ltd. aka PC Partner Group share the same vendor- & device-ID.

During my time at Zotac / PC Partner from 2007-2014, we always considered Sapphire as a sister company, despite, not being a wholely owned brand like Inno3D and Manli. While Sapphire was never a wholly owned subsidiary of PC Partner, there was some investment. Hell, the first 5 years or so of Zotac sales decks references Sapphire to establish quality.

However, not all Zotac cards were made by PC Partner either. High end Nvidia cards would be made by Flextronics and shipped to AIBs to slap their coolers on / bin for overclocking.

I've been correcting the Sapphire myth for months, ever since that interview. This at least confirms who the actual manufacturer is, since that seemed to be a mystery.

This post will help, but I assume the myth will be perpetuated for quite some time.

Wikipedia states that, as of 2007, Sapphire had had manufacturing facilities capable of producing 1.8M add-in cards monthly.

I wonder who owns these now? Can it be, by a pure coincidence, the PC Parthner group?

Just so people don't mistake it:

Sapphire is defnitely designing the reference cards, but PC Partner is contracted to manufacture them.

Ouch. Zotac is not known for their quality.

I’m confused. So my sapphire branded 6900xt that looks exactly like the AMD ref card, is it a ref card repackaged by sapphire or what? I bought it because it looks like the AMD card and that’s the aesthetic I wanted.

Around the Vega/Polaris era there used to be a whole bunch of manufactures selling the reference design, all looking the same except for maybe the sticker on the cooler fan.

Like ASUS, HIS, Gigabyte, Powercolor, MSI, XFX, etc.

Now I wonder if they actually made these cards or if it was just a rebranding thing

Interesting, I thought ZOTAC was the off-brand of video cards a couple of years ago.