What's with all the branding?! Pretty fundamental (newbie) GPU question

justoliver

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Jul 23, 2013
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Hi everybody,

Recently started constructing my very first gaming rig, which so far looks like this:

Cooler Master HAF XB Case
Asus Z87 Pro Motherboard
Intel i5 Haswell 4670k Processor
Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 2133mhz RAM (8GB [2x4GB])
Corsair TX650M Power Supply
Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212 CPU Cooler
Plextor M5 Pro 128GB SSD

I am very proud of it, and extremely excited to get it switched on for the first time! As you can see the only major component that is missing is the GPU; which brings me to the point of this desperate plea for information!

I have been scouting around for a graphics card and have landed on the GTX 770 (for around the 300-350 mark, I've heard it's the best [correct me if I'm wrong, please!]).

But at that price point there are SO many to choose from, and I mean soooo many! What is the difference between each of the brands? I've never even heard of brands like 'PNY', 'Zotac' and 'Gainward'! Obviously the more well-heard of brands like Asus, MSI and Gigabyte have (in my eyes) a reliable name attached to them, but which one should I go for? Should I just pick the cheapest and be done with it?

If anyone wants to go as far as to recommend me a specific GPU from a specific vendor then I am more than happy to take recommendations.

Thanks in advance everyone, for your time and for your opinions, and for bearing with my probably very obvious question!

 
Solution
I always recommend the factory overclocked cards from Asus, Gugabyte, MSI. However Asus seems to have dropped the ball this time, with their card coming out at a "outta the box" core clock at 1058 whereas the other two are at 1137

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127741
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125463

The statement that all cards are the same is false. Only "reference" cards are the same. In addition to the differences in coolers, non reference cards also can have:

1. Beefed up VRMs and PCBs
2. Additional heat sinks for VRMs
3. Hand picked GPUs

For example, the Asus DCII TOP series (GTX 670) had all of the above. The MSI Lightning and EVGA Classified have massive VRMs...
They will all perform the same, but differ a in operating temperature and noise. If you want your system to be quiet you'll want to avoid the cheapest cards, they generally have 'blower' coolers which are usually total crap. The best 770's are the Asus DirectCUII, Gigabyte Windforce, and EVGA ACX ones, just pick based on price/looks/warranty because they're all near enough equally as good.

You'll want to avoid 4GB versions (unless you plan to SLI them and go multi-monitor) or OC versions, the former because it does nothing for performance, the latter because GPU Boost 2.0 clocks are based off temperature, voltage, power draw etc. So though on paper one card should be faster than another, if or not it is will be down to luck. You are just wasting money because you can overclock it yourself with about 10 minutes work, and more often than not get much better performance than any factory OC card.
 
I always recommend the factory overclocked cards from Asus, Gugabyte, MSI. However Asus seems to have dropped the ball this time, with their card coming out at a "outta the box" core clock at 1058 whereas the other two are at 1137

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127741
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125463

The statement that all cards are the same is false. Only "reference" cards are the same. In addition to the differences in coolers, non reference cards also can have:

1. Beefed up VRMs and PCBs
2. Additional heat sinks for VRMs
3. Hand picked GPUs

For example, the Asus DCII TOP series (GTX 670) had all of the above. The MSI Lightning and EVGA Classified have massive VRMs and many factory OCd cards use PCBs from the 780 to beef the card up. You can not expect a factory OCd card like the EVGA SC series to perform as well under extreme OCs and stand up to the same conditions as ones with those kinds of improvements / advantages.

 
Solution