Why do companies like EVGA exist?

[lyphe]

This is just a very generic question that I was curious about.

Nvidia creates a card such as the GTX480. A whole bunch of companies such as EVGA resell it under their own branding. What is the point of this secondary co-branding? I understand when they overclock it since you are buying a modified board at that point. But is that the only time they co-brand ( ie. after modifying )? Other than things like overclocking, why dont' people just buy from Nvidia direct?

Just curious and thanks in advance to anyone that can explain it.

Lyphe

 

[skolpo]

It costs a lot of money running your own manufacturing plant. Manufacturers actually pay nVidia to be able to carry their products and manufacture them to their satisfaction. It's like a farmer selling his crop to distributors. The distributors deal with selling the product, while the farmer simply grows it (of course, this is no longer true in the dark world of today's agriculture, but that's another story).

 

[wolfram23]

A lot of these companies also alter the PCB design and cooler units. Nvidia/ATI release their "reference models" which all companies will make a few of (and they're all identical) but after that, they start coming out with their own versions of the cards like Vapor X, Twin Frozr, Lightning, DirectCU TOP etc... The overclocking part is actually pretty lame and I wouldn't pay for that since I can take the card to much higher clocks than any factory OC, but paying for the cooler or if it's a better designed card is worth it, or in the case of Asus they have their DirectCU line with "regular" version and "Top" version, which has the fastest binned chips so you can OC higher.

 

[lyphe]

Much appreciated and thx!

 

[lyphe]

Best answer selected by lyphe.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey