I received my spanking new XFX 5870 from Newegg.com. I really don't have vendor preference and as these cards are in high demand you have to take what you can get. The only issue with the stock XFX card and most other brands for that matter is the BIOS clock limits set by the manufacturer. This article describes how I changed this to overclock it.

Stock clocks on the HD 5870 are 850 MHz core and 1200 MHz on the memory and are locked to a mild OC of 900 MHz / 1300 MHz using ATI CCC or MSI AfterBurner. Fast enough, but not fast enough for real overclocking!

http://overclockers.com/index.php?op...ds&Itemid=4266