I notice that certain video card brands are more expensive than others. Why is this? I would figure that an x800 is an x800 no matter what name prefaces it. Does one brand offer you a better card or is the service just better. And the same with ram. I know everyone says Crucial, Kingston and Corsair are the top brands, but why? Would I be screwing myself to buy from a lesser known company. And what about companies not commonly associated with ram. Like Samsung or something. Thank you.
Like anything you buy, some companies use better qua;ity components and some pay more attentaion to detail of the overall design and build quality, as well as after sales service. I certaily would not have put Crucial or kingston before Corsair in any list, it hasn't got its reputation for nothing. If you are in doubt about a certain brand, then look for the reviews on tests and also look to see what feedback the customer service gets. The service I have ever recieved from Corsair has always been 1st class, and the quality range has lifetime warranties. I had a 3dconnect card a while back and the customer service was abosolutely crap, they refused to reply to me and the reseller for over 3 months after taking the card back (never touch them again)
The major differnece with different graphics cards manufactures is mostly the fan, and the card itself sometimes differs from place to place, but a X800 blue card by Gigabyte would most likely have the same basic features as a red one by ATI. What all these different companies do is tinker around and try and "change" it. The cooling is the usually the most apparent detail you might see, a HIS ICEDQ card, would look drastically different from any other maker. Alot of companies do actually tweak the settings built in to the chip, and "overclock" it if you will to make their card look better in benchmarks than the others. Others will market silent cooling using a massive cooler that takes up 3 slots! It's all a big game of marketing, and there's more selections of cards out there than there are games to play on them seems like. If you find a card that you like, google it and see if you can find a tech review about it, they will usually compare it to simalar cards, and can give you an idea of what you might expect if you spent that little extra money.
