980GTX MSI vs Reference

[blackstarek]

Hey Guys, im building a new PC.

Since I am gamer, I considered buying a MSI GTX 980 Graphics Card:

http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/review-ms...erformance


What will be the difference in cracking between this one and the original by GeForce Nvidia ?

Thank you in advance

[epixoip]

I feel like this has been covered ad nauseam, but I'll explain it once more.

The difference between reference design cards and OEM design cards is quality and reliability.

Reference design cards are over-engineered and excel in a variety of workloads and operating conditions. They use high-quality components and generally spare little to no expense in the card's design. Therefore they are expensive to manufacture, and the profit margins are very slim. This is not a problem for the chip designer though, as they make their money by manufacturing/selling the GPU chips or licensing the chip IP / reference design schematics, not from selling complete cards.

OEMs, on the other hand, do make their money by selling cards. Because of the slim margins on reference design cards, OEMs design their own variants of the card, using the reference design as a reference (hence the name.) OEMs achieve significant cost savings by re-using previous designs, using lower-quality components, and taking shortcuts wherever possible. Rather than being over-engineered like reference design cards, they are engineered to achieve the minimum acceptable quality for narrow use-cases -- mainly gaming -- while maximizing profits.

The resulting product is a very cheap board that just happens to use the same GPU chip as the reference design card. Neither the cooling solution nor the substitute components can typically handle the stress of compute applications, resulting in overheating and/or untimely demise of the card. Typically when a GPU burns out, the GPU chip itself is fine -- it's some other component on the card that has failed, and it failed because it was of inferior quality compared to the one used on the reference design.

It is for these reasons that we advise people to never buy OEM design cards, because they are junk and you will likely just be throwing money away.

[blackstarek]

So is it possible that my resselers in my country dont actualy sell the official reference cards?

Or where do you guys actualy buy them? Im from CZ.

[epixoip]

It is possible that resellers in your area do not sell reference design cards. You could contact them and ask them if they are able to get reference design cards through their supply chain. Or you could look at auction sites, or out-of-country resellers that ship to CZ.

[blackstarek]

And does the OEM realy matter that much on a single-GPU or maximal Double GPU PC?

[rsberzerker]

It is possible that resellers in your area do not sell reference design cards. You could contact them and ask them if they are able to get reference design cards through their supply chain. Or you could look at auction sites, or out-of-country resellers that ship to CZ.

IMHO, I think it would be helpful you could post a way to ID reference cards from non-reference cards. What would a potential buyer look for? The most expensive model XXX for instance???

[undeath]

Go to the nvidia page. Look at the picture. If the card does not look exactly the same it's OEM.

[blackstarek]

It is possible that resellers in your area do not sell reference design cards. You could contact them and ask them if they are able to get reference design cards through their supply chain. Or you could look at auction sites, or out-of-country resellers that ship to CZ.

IMHO, I think it would be helpful you could post a way to ID reference cards from non-reference cards. What would a potential buyer look for? The most expensive model XXX for instance???

Uhm, OEM = another company mades product based on chipset of the original company. So basicaly, If I get it right, the only one, who is not OEM but a reference, are the cards made by NVIDIA . Every other card is OEM, right?

So If I have a single GPU/double GPU PC, is it big problem to have a OEM card? Cause It usualy doesn't suffer from over-heating. And secondary, would there be a Hash per second drop?

[rsberzerker]

Uhm, OEM = another company mades product based on chipset of the original company. So basicaly, If I get it right, the only one, who is not OEM but a reference, are the cards made by NVIDIA . Every other card is OEM, right?

But another company *COULD* build to the exact same specs...How often that is true is another story.

[epixoip]

IMHO, I think it would be helpful you could post a way to ID reference cards from non-reference cards. What would a potential buyer look for? The most expensive model XXX for instance???

undeath is correct, and this has been stated a few other times on the forums as well: the way to identify a reference design card is to look at the official product photos on amd.com or nvidia.com. If the card in question doesn't look precisely like the official product photos, then it is not a reference design card.

But another company *COULD* build to the exact same specs...How often that is true is another story.

OEMs certainly do manufacture reference design cards, in fact 99% of the time when you buy a reference design card, it will have been manufactured by an OEM. This is fine. It's not that you shouldn't buy a card made by an OEM, it's that you shouldn't buy a card designed by an OEM. All that matters is that the card adheres to the reference specification.