Gaming Rig--Best bang for buck: i5 2500k | GTX 570 | 16GB PC2133 | Z68 | 120GB SSD

[mfenn]

IDK if my amp actually does DTS, I'll have to check. I do know that DTS is higher bit-rate than Dolby Digital...so that should mean that it has better sound quality.

If it's just an amp, I doubt it does either DD or DTS. If it's a receiver, it almost certainly does both (unless it's really old).

 

[Puppies04]

I wouldn't say that the ASRock is a worse board because it is less expensive, ASRock is a much smaller company and is able to be profitable on a much smaller gross margin than MSI.

Sorry to go a little OT but as far as i am aware a larger company can not only buy raw materials/ components at cheaper costs due to its buying power but also afford to make less %profit per item sold due to its greater number of products sold (thats not even taking into account savings on larger production runs). I'm not following your logic mfenn

 

[mfenn]

Sorry to go a little OT but as far as i am aware a larger company can not only buy raw materials/ components at cheaper costs due to its buying power but also afford to make less %profit per item sold due to its greater number of products sold (thats not even taking into account savings on larger production runs). I'm not following your logic mfenn

Economy of scale is certainly a factor, but only to a certain extent. If you're buying, say, raw DIMM slots it makes a huge difference if you buy 10 vs 10,000. 10,000 vs. 100,000, not so much. ASRock is small, but they're not boutique small.

Your second point depends on whether or not you are talking about gross margin or net margin. Net margin really isn't applicable to this discussion because that's more of an overall corporate strategy (Apple vs. HP). Gross margin is what I referred to in my previous post.

ASRock has much smaller operating costs (thing marketing, HR, corporate yachts, etc.) than a big company in a lot of markets like ASUS or MSI. M ore of their gross margin goes right into the net margin than it would for a bigger company. So they can sell the same components for cheaper because less of it is subsidizing other projects, for example notebook R&D. Thus, my original statement, "ASRock is a much smaller company and is able to be profitable on a much smaller gross margin".