Manufacturer?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

OK since Ive been shopping for a good pc to play MTW2 on Ive noticed that things like grahpic cards have different companies making the same card. Someone told me you not only have to know what card your getting but that who makes it can be almost as important. Whats the story here and how do you know what your getting. Most places only tell your getting lets say a GeForce 7600GS but not who makes it. Why such differences in price for seemingly the samething? And is there really that much difference in quality and performance or am I way off base here?

[LeftEyeNine]

In business terms, brands are brands because they give you the recognition of attributes such as quality, guarantee, reliability etc. So that it's not hard to guess why brands such as Asus, MSI, Gigabyte apply higher prices for their products. They use the branding advantage. There indeed is something called brand loyalty and people do not care about the rest when they are "connected" with a brand. And when that is likely to happen, a brand has evolved into a brand really, thus giving them advantage to set higher prices.

For sure this is not only about "let's-suck-the-loyal-fools". They promise additional softwares, better customer service etc. For sure, a highly reputable brand checks their products before shipment better than a cheap seller. Or that they prefer better raw materials and better work force with their products. Since you are investing extra in production phase, you'll need to meet your expenses, hence price-skim the market when you are in with your product.

So after so much blah blah, what's the deal ? Well, if you don't want to pay a higher price for the same product or want to know if your hard-earned money will be worth being paid more rather than a technically equivalent but cheaper product, you'll look into reviews. My thumb rule: I never buy a PC component without reading at least a single review thoroughly. Why risk your wallet, while there are people that can derive the con's and pro's for you?

There you go, old man. Google will one day conquer the world but it is still your friend for now. ~:)

[Phatose]

It matters because of factory overclocks and warranties. Especially among nVidia card manufacturers, but now among Ati's third party manufacturers as well, different manufacturers will give their core clocks and mem clocks different settings.

Several of the high tier manufacturers also give lifetime warranties on their cards, while others limit it to 3 or even 1 year.

[BDC]

Lifetime warrantees are worthless though. It's a con.

Even 3 years is a bit too long. These things age so fast...

[Beirut]

I think unless the company is particularly bad, in which case you would probably hear about it quickly, most of the cards are soundly built and within a reasonable degree of performance of the same model built by another company.

I balance the reviews in PCGamer, tomshardware.com, a few flightsim forums with people I "know", here also of course, and price.

BFG, according to all sources I've seen, makes good cards with good prices and warranties. I bought one of their cards last year and my rig runs really nicely. Never had a problem.

I bought several cards from the lower-end makers like PowerColor and they ran perfectly well for years. I've also had ATI brand name cards and they were fine too. Actually, from my first 4 Meg 3DFX that ran tandem with my 2 meg 2D card, I have yet to have ever bought a lemon.