Would a QHY-5 guider be usable for multi target sequence?

Hi, the QHY-5 is an 8 bit guider and it works well with my current imaging software as long as I manually select the guide star. I can script my software to image multiple targets. The problem I am facing is that if I let the software choose the guide star it selects the brightest star in the field and that is usually a saturated star which gives poor results. Getting a 12 to 16 bit camera would solve the problem. For reasons I don't want to get into I'm not interested in QHY and ZWO. So rather then putting out 5 to 6 hundred dollars for a new guider is anyone using a QHY-5 or Original Orion Star shoot guider for unattended multi target imaging with SGP and PHD and getting good guiding?
-Iver