[suicidealice]

Hello! so first off this is my first thread ever (sorry if im nooby) however i was wondering what the differences in card are? Not different series but different cards in one series, such as the gtx970. so i guess my proper question is within the GTX 970 family there are a bunch of different brands and models of the "same" card. for my new gaming rig i want the reference nvidia geforce gtx970. because it just looks too sexy, however i come to realize that paying $379 just for that card compared to other gtx970s that are only in the upper $200, so why is that? is the nvidia reference one better than lets say the gtx970 strix? is it the performance? the build quality? appearance? or just because nvidia can get away with that price point because its easily accessible at a best buy? now i know each manufacture has their own software and OC software for said cards. so does that also lead to price factors? (i know form factor is also a play in this but for the sake of sanity were going to leave oversized and micro cards out of this.

thanks guys!

 

[ozlay]

The difference is minimal most of time i look at who ever has the lowest price and then i look at the warranty. Some of the cheaper cards might have a lower clock speed on the gpu or ram. But there is no real benefit to choosing to go with an oem card from Nvidia. Nvidia cards are almost always more expensive then others like zotac or pny or msi. If you are buying at best buy you are over paying.

personally I normally go with an evga or asus cards or zotac cards that have higher clock speeds. If it fits my budget anyways.

 

[Fuell]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozlay

The difference is minimal most of time i look at who ever has the lowest price and then i look at the warranty. Some of the cheaper cards might have a lower clock speed on the gpu or ram. But there is no real benefit to choosing to go with an oem card from Nvidia. Nvidia cards are almost always more expensive then others like zotac or pny or msi. If you are buying at best buy you are over paying.

personally I normally go with an evga or asus cards or zotac cards that have higher clock speeds. If it fits my budget anyways.

Besbuy aint so bad these days price wise. Prices are similar to newegg, every BB order in this price range would be free shipping, that offsets a bit. Oh and BB will now price match newegg.com and tigerdirect.com so not bad.

Just sayin. Though I likely still wouldn't shop there lol

Edit> Quotes broken... I had to manually copy/paste text myself... and it did 3 quotes of empty box... odd...

 

[suicidealice]

thanks guys! now i have some ground to go by instead of re googling it over and over trying to find some answers!

 

[ozlay]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fuell

Besbuy aint so bad these days price wise. Prices are similar to newegg, every BB order in this price range would be free shipping, that offsets a bit. Oh and BB will now price match newegg.com and tigerdirect.com so not bad.

well depends on where you live but here with bestbuy you pay tax on items so its a lot more then with newegg. so its about $30 more for a $300 item do to tax. plus at my local bestbuy they only have 2 options OEM and PNY. I guess the op has more options which is nice.

 

[Fuell]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozlay

well depends on where you live but here with bestbuy you pay tax on items so its a lot more then with newegg. so its about $30 more for a $300 item do to tax. plus at my local bestbuy they only have 2 options OEM and PNY. I guess the op has more options which is nice.

IIRC your still supposed to pay taxes on purchases from places like newegg and amazon, they just don't collect the taxes like stores like BestBuy. So its not really cheaper, people just don't bother paying the taxes owed since the gov won't know either way. It's technically illegal, though I'm sure this doesn't apply to 100% of places, it depends on county, state laws and such but most still are supposed to pay taxes.

I always find it funny when people say its cheaper at Place A over Place B because you don't have to pay taxes at Place A but do at Place B. For 99% of people the price is the same, they just simply don't pay the taxes owed.