off-brand

  • Thread starter Thread starter PB
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PB

Why do people buy all these off-brand cards when there are plenty of
reputable manufacturers out there seling cards for nice prices? Most of the
complaints with cards, ATI and nVidia, are with off-brand products using
their GPUs, I am talking over 95%

PB
 
PB said:
Why do people buy all these off-brand cards when there are plenty of
reputable manufacturers out there seling cards for nice prices? Most of the
complaints with cards, ATI and nVidia, are with off-brand products using
their GPUs, I am talking over 95%

PB
Click to expand...
For starters, almost all those distributors (I don't think you meant
manufacturers there, PB) are in North America. Built by ATi cards are no
longer distributed in the rest of the world, and a large proportion of the
posters here are not in the US or Canada.

patrick
 
patrickp said:
For starters, almost all those distributors (I don't think you meant
manufacturers there, PB) are in North America. Built by ATi cards are no
longer distributed in the rest of the world, and a large proportion of the
posters here are not in the US or Canada.
Click to expand...

And further, there are some OEM cards that are as good as ATI-branded but
cost significantly less. Sapphire, for example, builds cards for ATI, but
sells their own label for bargain prices. There are a growing number of
people who have figured out how to modify or overclock the OEM cards for a
significant savings.

When you can buy a Sapphire 9800 non-pro for $243 and overclock it to Pro
speeds, a lot of people are more than happy to keep the extra money in their
pockets.

You do have to be wary of brands you're not familiar with, especially when
some of them use lower quality memory and clock them slower to compensate.

But if you know what you're getting and read the reviews at website and from
owners, you can get more bang for the buck from those "off-brand" cards.

I paid $69 for a Sapphire 32-meg Radeon SE and flashed the bios to turn it
into a $250 ATI Radeon DDR.

I paid $175 for a Sapphire 128-meg Radeon 8500 LE and turned it into a $300
Radeon 8500.

I paid $159 for a Sapphire Radeon 9500 non-pro and modded it to a $400
Radeon 9700 Pro.

Maybe off-brand, but on-target for cost-conscious tweakers.
 
And further, there are some OEM cards that are as good as ATI-branded
but cost significantly less. Sapphire, for example, builds cards for
ATI, but sells their own label for bargain prices. There are a growing
number of people who have figured out how to modify or overclock the
OEM cards for a significant savings.
Click to expand...

FWIW, ATI sells Sapphire brand boards on their own site when Sapphire
has a product that fills in a hole in the ATI product line.
 
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