OEM or Retail Ati 9700 Pro ???

[lundog22]

Hi

I debating which is the smarter way to go, OEM or Retail 9700 Pro, and why? Thanks alot

 

[coloumb]

From what I've read - it doesn't really matter. With retail, you pay for the name. With OEM, you don't.

 

[MIGhunter]

It's all about you. Can you buy an oem and live with it or will you constantly think that the retail box is better. They are the same literature wise but nobody has tested them that I know of.

If it is piece of mind you want, newegg has them both and there really isn't that much of a difference in price.

 

[Lonyo]

Retail has warranty, and sometimes extra software.

If you can live without the software and other extras, go OEM. My retail Ti 4400 came with Giants, and I enjoyed it and I'm glad I didn't get an OEM with no games, but the choice is yours.

 

[ciparis]

Retail, retail, retail.

This is a new card, coming out at the same time as new games and new AGP standards (8X). Alot of it has never been tested together, simply because they were all in development at the same time, and testing on noexistent products only happens when manufacturers work together prior to launch (like Via and ATI did on their AGP 8X boards). Get a retail, so if you need to RMA to a newer bios revision because of a conflict with something, you can get it, straight from ATI without hassles.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Currently Sapphire and Gigabyte are the only ones selling OEM parts so far. If you have a problem with a Sapphire OEM board, you talk to ATI's tech support anyway, so I don't see any reason to spend the extra $30-35 for the Retail over a Sapphire board, you get the same documentation and cableing goodies. I don't know how Gigabyte is set-up on thier support and haven't even seen any of thier boards currently available yet either.

 

[Technonut]

I don't know how Gigabyte is set-up on thier support and haven't even seen any of thier boards currently available yet either.

The Gigabyte GV-R9700 PRO is available at Newegg for $369.00. It has a game bundle, and also comes with Power DVD XP. The HSF and RAM sinks look nice too.

EDIT: Anand's Review of the GV-R9700 Pro

 

[xpeter]

I don't know how is the situation rught now with ATI but when I was buying my Radeon 64 DDR exactly a year ago the non-retail versions of cards had slower DDR-SDRAM memory chips. I like the retail retail hardware and I would definitelly buy an GigaByte or ATI retail board. Anyway ATI is selling their original cards only in Canada and U.S. in Europe there are Colorpower, Sapphire, Super Grace and GigaByte. GigaByte cards are the best, even better designed than original ATI cards with a massive heatsink on memory and GPU. Sapphire should be also a good brand since they were doing the cards for ATI for sales in Europe - every retail or OEM ATI card that was sold in Europe and was marked MADE IN CHINA was manufactured by Sapphire. I would definitely go for the ATI or GigaByte retail card.

 

[cmdrdredd]

i'm going to get the Gigabyte 9700 for the cool look and the ramsinks and game bundle. Sure I have a coule of the games already, but the ones I don't have are a bonus. The overclocking potential also makes it a done deal for me.

 

[BLiT45]

Okay, of course meaning OEM as being a 3rd party manufacturer of Radeon 9700's I assume, and not as the common definition of OEM as meaning "less or no warranty, no box, no name, etc", like an OEM CD drive. Correct? I don't even think there are those kinds of cards out there...so I imagine it's safe enough to pick which manufacturer you prefer. I mean it's not like NVidia makes their own cards, just the chips...and nobody hesitated getting another card from another manufacturer then, right? At least I don't think they make their own cards???

Anyways, well there is no reason why not to go with a company that will give you a better HS/FAN or Memory Heat Sinks...games/software, etc. I don't think. Again, how about it, anyone to watch out for that stands above the rest, or one to NOT get?

I haven't seen the Gigabyte anywhere for sale in Canada, just original ATI cards, with the exception of one, a Powercolor (I think it was called), and it had silver Heat Sinks on the memory...looked pretty sharp, other than the silly box it came in.